Riaz Haq writes this data-driven blog to provide information, express his opinions and make comments on many topics. Subjects include personal activities, education, South Asia, South Asian community, regional and international affairs and US politics to financial markets. For investors interested in South Asia, Riaz has another blog called South Asia Investor at http://southasiainvestor.blogspot.com and a YouTube video channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkrIDyFbC9N9evXYb9cA_gQ

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Taliban or RAW-liban?

The Taliban have mounted major terrorist assaults in Kabul and Peshawar this week, claiming over a hundred innocent lives in just one day. The Kabul bombing targeted the U.N. because of the organization's role in organizing the country's presidential election on Nov. 7 -- a second-round runoff that insurgents have threatened to disrupt by killing election workers. The Peshawar attack targeted the Meena Bazar full of women shoppers, maximizing civilian casualties. As a result, the bulk of the loss of civilian lives occurred on the Pakistani side.

Significant differences in the organizations, objectives, strategies and tactics are beginning to emerge between the Afghan and the Pakistani Taliban with the intensification of violence on both sides of the border. The Afghan insurgents generally have shown greater concern about avoiding civilian casualties, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Unlike the Pakistani Taliban who deliberately target to maximize civilian deaths, the main targets of the Afghan Taliban have been the foreigners who they see as occupiers, not the ordinary Afghan civilians.
The long-running insurgencies on both sides of the border usually operate independently. Pakistani and Afghan Taliban leaders occasionally cooperate, but the differences in their objectives, strategies, tactics and targets point to the possibility of different sources of support and funding for the two organizations.

The Pakistani Taliban movement grew out of some of the Afghan Taliban that took refuge in Pakistani tribal areas on the border following the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan. Organizationally distinct from the Afghan group, Pakistani Taliban rose up in 2002 in response to the Pakistani army's incursions into the tribal areas to hunt down militants. In 2008, Pakistani security forces clashed with pro-Taliban militants in the tribal area near Peshawar, jeopardizing peace talks between the militants and the government. With the recent dramatic rise in horrific suicide bombings in Pakistan this year, the Pakistani military has undertaken a major offensive in South Waziristan to flush out the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan militants and stop the daily carnage in Pakistani cities and towns. There is good organization, effective planning, working supply lines, significant funding, and the fierce resistance by the TTP greeting the Pakistani military onslaught in South Waziristan, raising strong suspicions of Indian Intelligence agency RAW's involvement with the Pakistani Taliban in the current crisis.

Here's what Christine Fair of Rand Corporation thinks about Indian involvement in destabilizing Pakistan via its growing presence and influence in Afghanistan:

I think it would be a mistake to completely disregard Pakistan's regional perceptions due to doubts about Indian competence in executing covert operations. That misses the point entirely. And I think it is unfair to dismiss the notion that Pakistan's apprehensions about Afghanistan stem in part from its security competition with India. Having visited the Indian mission in Zahedan, Iran, I can assure you they are not issuing visas as the main activity! Moreover, India has run operations from its mission in Mazar (through which it supported the Northern Alliance) and is likely doing so from the other consulates it has reopened in Jalalabad and Qandahar along the border. Indian officials have told me privately that they are pumping money into Baluchistan. Kabul has encouraged India to engage in provocative activities such as using the Border Roads Organization to build sensitive parts of the Ring Road and use the Indo-Tibetan police force for security. It is also building schools on a sensitive part of the border in Kunar--across from Bajaur. Kabul's motivations for encouraging these activities are as obvious as India's interest in engaging in them. Even if by some act of miraculous diplomacy the territorial issues were to be resolved, Pakistan would remain an insecure state. Given the realities of the subcontinent (e.g., India's rise and its more effective foreign relations with all of Pakistan's near and far neighbors), these fears are bound to grow, not lessen. This suggests that without some means of compelling Pakistan to abandon its reliance upon militancy, it will become ever more interested in using it -- and the militants will likely continue to proliferate beyond Pakistan's control.

The former (American) intelligence official strongly supported the regional approach to Afghanistan suggested by US special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke. "Afghanistan is a classic power vacuum," the former official said. "Neighbors see it as point of instability to guarantee their own stability or an opportunity to score points."

While the U.S. media has frequently reported on Pakistani ties to jihadi elements launching attacks in Afghanistan, it has less often mentioned that India supports insurgent forces attacking Pakistan, the former intelligence official said. "The Indians are up to their necks in supporting the Taliban against the Pakistani government in Afghanistan and Pakistan," the former (US) intelligence official who served in both countries said. "The same anti-Pakistani forces in Afghanistan also shooting at American soldiers are getting support from India. India should close its diplomatic establishments in Afghanistan and get the Christ out of there."

"None of this is ever one-sided," he added. "That is why it was so devastating and we were so let down" when India got taken out of Holbrooke's official brief.

There are strong indications that the Indian security and intelligence establishment has finally launched the covert war in Pakistan that they have been planning for about a year. The Indian officials have been seething since last year because of their inability to "punish" Pakistan following the Mumbai terrorist attacks that they blamed on Pakistan. They shelved the idea of lightning air strikes strategy dubbed "Cold Start" against Pakistan for fear of sparking a major war. But they have continued to talk about covert actions by Indian agents to destabilize and balkanize Pakistan. Former RAW chief B. Raman has argued that India appoint a covert ops specialist as the new head of RAW. He said last December that “at this critical time in the nation’s history, RAW has no covert action specialists at the top of its pyramid. Get a suitable officer from the IB or the Army. If necessary, make him the head of the organization.”

Vikram Sood, another former top spy in India, has elaborated on India's covert warfare options to target Pakistan in the following words: "Covert action can be of various kinds. One is the paramilitary option, which is what the Pakistanis have been using against us. It is meant to hurt, destabilize or retaliate. The second is the psychological war option, which is a very potent and unseen force. It is an all weather option and constitutes essentially changing perceptions of friends and foes alike. The media is a favorite instrument, provided it is not left to the bureaucrats because then we will end up with some clumsy and implausible propaganda effort. More than the electronic and print media, it is now the internet and YouTube that can be the next-generation weapons of psychological war. Terrorists use these liberally and so should those required to counter terrorism."

S.M. Mushrif, former Police Chief of Maharashtra and the author of "Who Killed Karkare?", believes that the Indian Intelligence Bureau (IB) is up to its neck in conspiring with the extreme Hindutva groups against Indian Muslims and creating trouble between India and Pakistan, and now it is ominous to see one of the former IB leaders K.C. Verma heading RAW as of early this year.

The power establishment that really runs the affairs of India (Mushrif says it is not Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh or Rahul Gandhi) does not want to expose the rabidly anti-Muslim Hindutva terrorists.

Verma was appointed earlier this year as the new head of RAW, regarded as one of the top intelligence agencies along with Mossad, ISI, SVR, MI6, and the CIA. This choice appears to have been made at the suggestion of intelligence hawks like B. Raman to appoint an outsider, in spite of significant resistance from within the agency. Mr. Verma has been tasked with rapidly building strong covert ops capabilities within RAW. It is not a coincidence that the terrorist attacks in Pakistan have dramatically increased since Verma took the reins of RAW.

Indians have demonstrated that they have the strong motives and the means to hurt Pakistan. They have established a powerful presence in Afghanistan along the border with Pakistan and deployed significant resources to carry out a very violent covert war inside Pakistan, and they appear to have now found the opportunity among the willing allies in the Pakistani Taliban faction in Mehsud tribe.

Given the strong probability of Indian involvement in the current crisis, the Pakistani security and intelligence establishment can not rely on counterinsurgency operations alone to stop the civilian carnage on Pakistani streets. The counterinsurgency operations must be supplemented with serious efforts to cut off support and funding for the TTP, and disrupt the Indian intelligence network operating out of Afghanistan. It will require superior intelligence and significant counter-intelligence operations, as well as an effective diplomatic offensive to put pressure on India to stop its covert war being waged on Pakistani soil.

Here are video clips of Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval talking about his 7 years undercover for RAW in Pakistan:

195 comments:

Actually indian is honoured by bloggers like riazhaq.com, pakalert.wordpress.com

They have actually showered complements on the strategic thinking of the indian armed forces and political establishment.

I donot think so at this juncture neither the indian political leadership nor the armed force has this amount of guts. Proabably if you would have written this in 1970 when indira gandhi was in realm, any body would have agreed as she was an authoritative person with a clear intention of doing anything which she wanted.

For a moment, let us assume that they taliban are trained by RAW.

Why is not pakistan asking the question that the purist taliban is ready to date with infidel hindu ?

If taliban is funded by india why is that taliban threatening india once they are finished up with pakistan army

why is that taliban giving offer to pakistan that if they stop attacking taliban and if pakistan throws away usa, they will fight for pakistan cause in kashmir and other border.

Eternal problem of pakistan is to blame somebody for their problem

Bitter truth is pakistan is reaping the hatred with interest which they have been sowing for the last two decades at the behest of their infidel mast usa. master is smart to keep the war very far away from their homeland and fight with technology without sharing it with pakistan as its mistress isreal will get angry if they transfer too much technology to an islamic state.

Anon: "Why is not pakistan asking the question that the purist taliban is ready to date with infidel hindu ?"

This is not "The Taliban" from Afghanistan, some of whom are ideologues and purists.

The Taliban who I believe are cooperating with Indian intelligence are the TTP faction in Mehsud tribe in South Waziristan, who specifically target Pakistan and Pakistanis. These Taliban have a temporary common interest with Indians in causing murder and mayhem on the streets of Pakistan. I see them as temporary tools rather than strategic allies of India.

Long term, if these elements do succeed in defeating the Pakistani state, their next target could very well be India. So Indians need to watch out for potential unintended consequences of their actions which they might satisfying in the short term.

Assume that india has tieup with the following as alleged or believed by pakistani

"he Taliban who I believe are cooperating with Indian intelligence are the TTP faction in Mehsud tribe in South Waziristan, who specifically target Pakistan and Pakistanis."

What is wrong in it. For india pakistan is a nuisance value. From india's perspective, there is somebody who is ready to engage with your nuisance for a small price of arms which we would have got from operations on the border.

I think it makes more sense for india and nothing wrong in doing the same as even today pakistan does not have any regrets on the mayhem created by it in india all over and in pakistan for few decades.

Hinduism like some type of abrahamic religion does not ask you to show the other cheek if one slaps. Rather it is asked to take head on and that is the reason that gita was told on the warfield and not on the palace. CONVINCE, CONFUSE, CORRUPT & CASTRATE, If no choice left you can kill the holy cow and surely pakistan is not a holy cow and that also from some other guys, i think it makes more sense.

As far as long term is concern, it helps to avoid the short term nuisance from pakistan for india

"Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud has claimed that controversial American security firm Blackwater was behind the deadly bomb attack on a market in Peshawar that killed 105 people on Wednesday.

In an interview with BBC Urdu, he claimed that Blackwater and 'Pakistani agencies' were involved in attacks in public places, in an attempt to discredit the militants. "

"why is that taliban giving offer to pakistan that if they stop attacking taliban and if pakistan throws away usa, they will fight for pakistan cause in kashmir and other border."

As I said in my response earlier, the Indian intelligence agencies and the India government are not rationally thinking of the consequences in their desire for vengeance. They have this mistaken belief that they can handle the Taliban menace when it turns on them in the future. In the meanwhile, they want to inflict maximum damage on Pakistan.

"As I said in my response earlier, the Indian intelligence agencies and the India government are not rationally thinking of the consequences in their desire for vengeance. They have this mistaken belief that they can handle the Taliban menace when it turns on them in the future. In the meanwhile, they want to inflict maximum damage on Pakistan."

Riaz, You are under the assumption that Indian Govt will face the same constraints what Pak govt is facing. One of the reasons why Pak govt is still clueless when it comes to Taliban is because of rampant sympathy among low ranked army people. They are considered their brothers. Same with lot of marginalized people in Pakistan (which means majority) who have their own axe to grind against feudal and rich class and would rather see Pakistan's economy crushed so as to hurt them , sort of cutting one's nose to spite it.Why would you think Indian govt will face the same constraints. They can use all the force they want since no one in india would support talibani muslims, except may be few disgruntled indian muslims.

Founded in 1968, RAW focused largely on Pakistan. Its formation was initially motivated by reports of Pakistan supplying weapons to Sikh militants, and providing shelter and training to guerrillas in Pakistan.

Numerous missions were assigned to RAW upon its creation. These included monitoring political and military developments in neighboring countries that affects Indian national security. Consequently, considerable attention is paid by RAW to Pakistan and China, countries that are traditional rivals of India.

RAW has evolved from its origins as a part of the Intelligence Bureau to develop into India's predominant intelligence organization. In 1968, RAW had 250 agents and a budget of Rs. 2 crore. This has expanded to a 2000 total of an estimated eight to ten thousand agents and a budget that experts place at Rs. 1500 crore, alternately estimated at $145 million.

Pakistan has accused the Research and Analysis Wing of sponsoring sabotage in Punjab, where RAW is alleged to have supported the Seraiki movement, providing financial support to promote its activities in Pakistan and organizing an International Seraiki Conference in Delhi in November-December 1993. RAW has an extensive network of agents and anti-government elements within Pakistan, including dissident elements from various sectarian and ethnic groups of Sindh and Punjab. Published reports in Pakistan allege that as many as 35,000 RAW agents entered Pakistan between 1983-93, with 12,000 working in Sindh, 10,000 in Punjab, 8,000 in North West Frontier Province and 5000 in Balochistan.

RAW has a long history of activity in Bangladesh, supporting both secular forces and the area's Hindu minority. The involvement of RAW in East Pakistan is said to date from the 1960s, when RAW supported Mujibur Rahman, leading up to his general election victory in 1970. RAW also provided training and arms to the Bangladeshi freedom fighters known as Mukti Bahini. RAW's aid was instrumental in Bangladesh's gaining independence from Pakistan in 1971.

During the course of its investigation the Jain Commission received testimony on the official Indian support to the various Sri Lankan Tamil armed groups in Tamil Nadu. From 1981, RAW and the Intelligence Bureau established a network of as many as 30 training bases for these groups in India. Centers were also established at the high-security military installation of Chakrata, near Dehra Dun, and in the Ramakrishna Puram area of New Delhi. This clandestine support to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), some of whom were on the payroll of RAW, was later suspended. Starting in late 1986 the Research and Analysis Wing focused surveillance on the LTTE which was expanding ties with Tamil Nadu separatist groups. Rajiv Gandhi sought to establish good relations with the LTTE, even after the Indian Peace Keeping Force [IPKF] experience in Sri Lanka. But the Indian intelligence community failed to accurately assess the character of the LTTE and its orientation India and its political leaders. The LTTE assassination of Rajiv Gandhi was apparently motivated by fears of a possible re-induction of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in Sri Lanka and a crackdown on the LTTE network in Tamil Nadu.

Anon: "Is this a proof? You have to catch them red-handed like Pakistani agents have been caught many times in india, specially last year's mumbai massacre."

And who have caught "red-handed"? Kasab? What links him to the ISI or the Pakistani state? Nothing.

And there are serious questions that have not been answered about the killing of ATS chief Karkare. The recent book by former IG of Maharashtra alleges IB involvement and cover-up of Hindutva violence in Malegaon and Samjhota blasts.

"And who have caught "red-handed"? Kasab? What links him to the ISI or the Pakistani state? Nothing. "

Doesn't matter. Pakistan govt has admitted that 8 of the ten terrorists of mumbai came from Mumbai. They are linked to LET. Isn't Pakistan responsible for its citizens not engaging in terrorist acts outside Pakistan. This way no country can be held responsible for anything. All are individual acts.

Why doesn't Pak catch these so called Hindu terrorists doing something fishy in Pakistan. Of course they can't, since there are none.

Anon: "Why doesn't Pak catch these so called Hindu terrorists doing something fishy in Pakistan. Of course they can't, since there are none."

They have caught several, including Kashmir Singh, who was released last year and then admitted to orchestrating bombings in Punjab.

More recently, the Indian intelligence have found common cause with the TTP faction in Mehsud tribe who want to avenge their leader's death. These TTP agents are much more effective in causing daily mayhem than an individual agent like Kashmir Singh.

"They have caught several, including Kashmir Singh, who was released last year and then admitted to orchestrating bombings in Punjab."

any proof that there were indeed indians. Have you made a noise of it internationally. Has the Indian govt forced to admit that they were indeed indians (like you are forced to admit after Mumbai). What Pakistan must do is to get all the western countries on board and put pressure on india to stop terrorising pakistanis (just like they did to Pakistan after Mumbai)

Riaz Said"Really? Then what is the purpose of RAW, except to fish in Pakistan's troubled waters and interfere with other neighbors' affairs?"

The purpose of RAW is the same as any IB of a country in world be it CIA or anybody eles i.e. to collect necessary piece of intelligence for the self defence of the country. Now, RAW may or may not be involved in waziristan but your article from FAS does not prove it. That artilce is like a 8 grader school essay on RAW.

Here is what my difination of hard proof (you may no agree)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Indian_embassy_bombing_in_Kabul

As you can read, CIA has shared the Pakistani army involment in the attack. Post me something like this from a third party (Not a statement from Rehman Malik)

Fact is every other country is pointing finger to ISI/Pakistan be it UK, USA, Afganistan or most recently Iran. How many countries are blaming RAW other than the Pakistan.

@Riaz, with the current reputation of Pakistan in the western countries, no one would believe Pakistan if it accuses India of sending their raw agents. The correct course for Pakistan is to humiliate India internationally by convincing all govt in the west with proofs and let them pressurize india to stop it.This is what India did superbly after Mumbai attacks and Pak was left with no option.

Anon: "Fact is every other country is pointing finger to ISI/Pakistan be it UK, USA, Afganistan or most recently Iran. How many countries are blaming RAW other than the Pakistan."

The irony of the situation is that none of them have offered any "proof" either. Each of them blames ISI as a convenient escape goat for their own failures, in spite of the fact that ISI has done far more to stop terror than all of them combined.

ISI has caught many time more real al Qaeda terrorists and leaders, and more Pakistani soldiers and civilians have died in the real war on terror than soldiers and civilians from all if these nations combined.

Pakistan and Pakistanis have been the biggest victims of terror in this century.

Riaz, I think you are making a very good case for the RAWlibans but what about Mossad and CIA angle here? They have their axes to grind too. Peshawar’s IG recently made this claim that all 3 are involved in this last blast. Then we hear about Blackwater/ Xe Services getting all over the country while Nero is playing his flute. Haseeb

Haseeb,You raise good questions. This is the reason why I am arguing that Pakistan needs to beef up its intelligence and counterintelligence operations to identify and disrupt all of the different internal and external players and networks fishing in Pakistan's troubled waters.

We need to go beyond pointing fingers to actually finding out and stopping the real enemies of Pakistan.

Hilary Clinton has been quoted saying the following in answer to a question about India's involvement in Pakistan's current troubles: "So I can't agree with you because I personally don't have any information."

The reason she doesn't know it because she or the US haven't bothered to find out what's going on. It's simply not a priority for them.

Here's what Christine Fair of Rand Corporation thinks about Indian involvement in destabilizing Pakistan via its growing presence and influence in Afghanistan:

I think it would be a mistake to completely disregard Pakistan's regional perceptions due to doubts about Indian competence in executing covert operations. That misses the point entirely. And I think it is unfair to dismiss the notion that Pakistan's apprehensions about Afghanistan stem in part from its security competition with India. Having visited the Indian mission in Zahedan, Iran, I can assure you they are not issuing visas as the main activity! Moreover, India has run operations from its mission in Mazar (through which it supported the Northern Alliance) and is likely doing so from the other consulates it has reopened in Jalalabad and Qandahar along the border. Indian officials have told me privately that they are pumping money into Baluchistan. Kabul has encouraged India to engage in provocative activities such as using the Border Roads Organization to build sensitive parts of the Ring Road and use the Indo-Tibetan police force for security. It is also building schools on a sensitive part of the border in Kunar--across from Bajaur. Kabul's motivations for encouraging these activities are as obvious as India's interest in engaging in them. Even if by some act of miraculous diplomacy the territorial issues were to be resolved, Pakistan would remain an insecure state. Given the realities of the subcontinent (e.g., India's rise and its more effective foreign relations with all of Pakistan's near and far neighbors), these fears are bound to grow, not lessen. This suggests that without some means of compelling Pakistan to abandon its reliance upon militancy, it will become ever more interested in using it -- and the militants will likely continue to proliferate beyond Pakistan's control.

The former (American) intelligence official strongly supported the regional approach to Afghanistan suggested by US special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke. "Afghanistan is a classic power vacuum," the former official said. "Neighbors see it as point of instability to guarantee their own stability or an opportunity to score points."

While the U.S. media has frequently reported on Pakistani ties to jihadi elements launching attacks in Afghanistan, it has less often mentioned that India supports insurgent forces attacking Pakistan, the former intelligence official said. "The Indians are up to their necks in supporting the Taliban against the Pakistani government in Afghanistan and Pakistan," the former (US) intelligence official who served in both countries said. "The same anti-Pakistani forces in Afghanistan also shooting at American soldiers are getting support from India. India should close its diplomatic establishments in Afghanistan and get the Christ out of there."

"None of this is ever one-sided," he added. "That is why it was so devastating and we were so let down" when India got taken out of Holbrooke's official brief.

In this she says that the pakistani army feels that the militants will come along with them once USA is out

"Christine Fair: As Ashley notes, the perplexing question is why Pakistan's security elites do not recognize the problems their policies pose to Pakistan's own security. They argue that militants are increasingly turning on them, not as "blowback" from their own past and current policies, but because of Pakistan's alliance with the United States. Many have told me that once that alliance is shaken off, the Pakistani state will be able to restore good relations with the militants, who will continue to serve the security elites' interests. And to date, the use of these militant groups has been almost cost-free, has it not?"

Here she says that india is pumping in money for Baluchistan.

"Indian officials have told me privately that they are pumping money into Baluchistan. "

Do u think india will be out of mind to fund the terrorist who are looking at india as country of infidels.

Probably that could be the strategy of pakistan that they will date with infidel USA for funds on one side and Puritant Taliban on other side thinking that they are the smartest in the world. Finally they get shafted by both.

so far no proof of India's involvement. All mere opinions.Is there one country which has officially endorsed the view of Paksitan that India is behind terrorists acts in Pakistan.And if Pakistan govt is not doing anything to expose India, then, wellPakistan deserves to be terrorized.

see this Hilary talk in pak.http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5453673n

this link was working yesterday. May be you have to wait for few days.She is blunt saying "Pak can choose not to take the aid (KLA)"

How come not a single leader is saying "we don't want US money and we wont support US also in their war on terror". If I go to bank and ask for loan, do u think it is unreasonable for bank to put some demands.

dcruncher: "She is blunt saying "Pak can choose not to take the aid (KLA)"

Basically, Hillary is on a mission of public diplomacy to woo the Pakistani people, as evident from her schedule and speeches.

The talk of "choose not to accept" is posturing by Hillary, just like the posturing by Pakistanis who thump their chests about sovereignty. Both sides need each other badly in the current situation. Neither has much of choice but to be in this bad marriage of convenience.

US knows Pakistan is too big to fail and it must be bailed out. Pakistanis know they need the money from US (and other multi-lateral IFCs controlled by US) to survive in the current situation.

dcrunchr: "I am ashamed to be known as a Pakistani because she is so patronizing about Pakistan l.."

Let's be honest. Based on your track record of comments here on this forum, you have been "ashamed to be known as a Pakistani" for a long time...well before anything Hilary said or didn't say that you interpret as patronizing.

"When trying to discredit Baluch separatism, Islamabad often blames its regional rival, India, for abetting and influencing the rebels. Pakistan's wariness of India's hand in its affairs has only grown after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan saw Indian engagement there bloom — Pakistani officials say Indian consulates in the Afghan cities of Kandahar and Jalalabad are behind the destabilizing acts of subversion in Baluchistan. Baluch attacks are frequently followed by Pakistani accusations of Indian involvement, though Islamabad, which has a noted record of being a breeding ground for terrorists who make their way to India, has yet to show any evidence of Indian collusion."

Right. So if an author is india, then even publication from Time is considered worthless. And if the author is American (like Hilary or Holbrooke) then they are biased because zionist Hindus are paying them.Check what Holbrooke has to say about India's involvement:-

Anon: "So if an author is india, then even publication from Time is considered worthless. And if the author is American (like Hilary or Holbrooke) then they are biased because zionist Hindus are paying them.Check what Holbrooke has to say about India's involvement"

Each of them are participants, not objective or independent. They won;t divulge what they know because each has an ax to grind.

The best evidence is the prior statements of desire, the planning and the motivation on the part of Indian agencies and government, supplemented by former officer of the CIA who have been on the ground.

P Chidambaram has warned Pakistan against meddling in India's affairs and said any more terror, according to news reports. "We have been gaining strength day by day to counter terrorism from across the border. I have been warning Pakistan not to play games with us. (I have told them that) the last game should be Mumbai attacks. Stop it there," he told a public meeting in his home state of Madras last night.

The tough talk by Chida is nothing but a smokescreen to divert attention from India's ongoing covert war against Pakistan that is causing daily civilian carnage.

Pakistan's unambiguous response should be to call Chida's bluff by giving an ultimatum to India to stop using TTP and BLF to kill innocent Pakistanis, or be prepared to face the consequences.

Here is an analysis of India's strained relations with all of its neighbors, written by Shahid R. Siddiqui:

India has disputes with almost every neighbor which have strained their relationships for years.

Nepal: The tiny mountain state of Nepal has complained of persistent Indian dictation and interference in its internal affairs. That India employs economic blockades and manipulates transit facilities to this landlocked country for arm twisting is no secret.

Bangladesh: Likewise, Bangladesh is locked into an unresolved dispute for the building of the Farakka barrage that deprives Bangladesh of its water share. Despite the gratitude Bangladesh owes to India for having militarily dismembered Pakistan in 1971 to midwife its birth, relations between the two have often sunk to the rock bottom on a host of issues, including border disputes.

Sri Lanka: In Sri Lanka, India overtly and covertly supported the insurgency against the state by a nationalist group, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Jaffna – the northern region of this small island state. India’s support kept it politically and economically destabilized for decades. In the end, India paid for its interference when its prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, was assassinated by a Tamil activist for having betrayed the movement.

China: Although not a part of South Asia, China is India’s important neighbor but for decades Sino-Indian relations have remained frosty, at best. They went to war in 1962 over a border dispute. Competing for regional leadership, it antagonizes China by hoisting the Dalai Lama off and on to keep the issue of Tibet alive. Lately, having aligned itself with America to contain China, India is bargaining for a tense Sino-Indian relationship in the years to come.

Pakistan: With Pakistan, India maintains the worst of relations mainly because of Pakistan’s political and military standing and its ability to reject Indian domination. Outstanding disputes include Kashmir, water distribution, dams that India constructs in violation Indus Water Treaty and border issues. Pakistan’s dismemberment in 1971 by Indian hands is still fresh. And when India finances, arms and supports insurgency in Balochistan through its consulates along Afghan-Balochistan border and through its RAW agents operating inside Balochistan for the replay of East Pakistan scenario, the images of 1971 war come alive and acrimony between the two countries intensifies.

Afghanistan: By joining the American bandwagon in Afghanistan and positioning its troops in the name of infra structure development, India created enough concerns for Pakistan. But by its collusion with CIA and Mossad to take out Pakistan’s nuclear assets through subversion in FATA, the NWFP and other areas using the militants of Tehrik-e-Taliban, India is slamming shut the door on the peace process that Pakistan has been persistently trying to keep open ever since 1947. With a history of constant endeavors to balkanize Pakistan, Indian military build up in Afghanistan is seen by Pakistan’s military as an effort to put it in a nutcracker.

The growing Indian influence in Afghanistan is also a destabilizing factor in the region, as acknowledged even by Gen. McChrystal in his recent report. The make and types of sophisticated weapons and communications equipment, including satellite pictures of troop movements, recovered from the militants provide undeniable evidence of Indian involvement.

Pakistan on Monday claimed its security forces had seized Indian-made arms and equipment from the Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan, where the Army has launched a major operation to flush out the militants.

Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira and chief military spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas alleged during a news briefing that Pakistani troops had recovered "Indian arms, ammunition, literature and medical equipment" from Sherwangi, a key militant base that was captured a few days ago.

"We have informed the Foreign Office about this evidence. It is up to them to take up the matter with (the Indian government)," Abbas said in response to a question on India's alleged role in backing militants in South Waziristan.

Responding to another query on whether Pakistan will continue making overtures for peace talks with India despite the alleged recovery of Indian-made weapons and supplies, Kaira said: "As far as these weapons and evidence are concerned, definitely relevant quarters will take up this matter with (India).

"Pakistan on Monday claimed its security forces had seized Indian-made arms and equipment from the Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan, where the Army has launched a major operation to flush out the militants."

anyone wanna bet that Pak govt can not have the guts to take it up internationally.

Riaz,As usual I am not surprised you are toeing the line of conspiracy theorists.. Ok let me get this straight. You BELIEVE what ever comes out of Christine Fair's mouth.. Ok fine.. I will fight Christine Fair with Christine Fair!!!

Check out this link.http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?261113

Heck, I'll copy and paste the whole interview...

Caught in the crossfire between India and Pakistan over the Balochistan issue is C. Christine Fair, a senior political scientist at the non-profit think-tank RAND Corporation. This March, Fair participated in roundtable discussion organised by the prestigious American magazine, Foreign Affairs, during which she was quoted as saying, "Having visited the Indian mission in Zahedan, Iran, I can assure you they are not issuing visas as the main activity." The Pakistani press repeatedly cites her remark to bolster Pakistan's accusations that India supports separatists in Balochistan.

“But When you have analysts saying india’s doing nothing, it doesn’t help, because i don’t believe it’s true.”

Fair, who returned to Washington on Wednesday from a trip to India, addressed the controversy for the first time in an exclusive phone interview with Ashish Kumar Sen and insisted her remarks have been taken out of context and blown out of proportion. Excerpts:

In a Foreign Affairs roundtable earlier this year you are quoted as saying: "Having visited the Indian mission in Zahedan, Iran, I can assure you they are not issuing visas as the main activity!" What did you mean by this?

I am fairly confident that every consulate in Zahedan - and I believe Pakistan has one as well - are not issuing a lot of visas. What I actually meant was something relatively innocuous that the Pakistanis picked up, took out of context and blew out of proportion, and that is that competent intelligence agencies cultivate assets. They have listening posts. They are there to gather information.

I would be surprised if consulates in countries that have competent intelligence services are not doing this all over the place. This is a relatively quotidian activity that virtually all consulates engage in. I meant something far more banal and yet benign, and quite frankly commonplace than what was attributed to me.

How deeply enmeshed are Indian intelligence activities with the separatists in Balochistan?

I have never gone to any lengths to look at that issue and I do not know anyone who has a line of credible information. I have never insinuated anything other than what I have said to you.

Do you believe India is supporting terrorism in Balochistan?

I never said there was active support for terrorism, that was something that the Pakistanis attributed to me.

Continued.. Were you surprised at the inclusion of Balochistan in the joint statement that came out of the Manmohan Singh-Yousaf Raza Gilani meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh?

Yes and no. Given how much the Pakistanis have been wanting so much to find some way of establishing some kind of theory of victimisation, in that sense, no, I am not surprised. But in terms of the on-the-face merits, I was really quite surprised.

The Pakistan civilian government doesn't really have any control over any of these policies. In dealing with the Pakistan government one has to wonder what is the civilian government up to and on whose behest are they acting. Pakistanis generally believe that Indians are involved in what is happening in their country. A recent poll in Pakistan found many Pakistanis believe India was behind the Islamabad Marriott and Lahore attacks.

Also, the Pakistani media is very much manipulated by the ISI. The ISI has very standard operating procedures to plant stories in the media. There have been stories about me as well... I recently learned that I am a neo-conservative with a Zionist agenda!

Does India's decision to put Balochistan on the table help in moving forward the anti-terrorism dialogue? Do you expect Pakistan to be more willing to acting against LeT?

They are never going to be forthcoming about those issues. Pakistan will go after those militant groups that target it. If you look at the militant groups that the Pakistanis are going after - it is largely operating against a fairly small subset of militants that are targeting the state. I don't think the inclusion of the Balochistan issue is going to make someone a lot more forthcoming about an issue they will never be forthcoming about.

There is a lot of cynicism in Pakistan about the relationship between the military and the Taliban. Even though all these Taliban were displaced in Swat no high-value leader was killed.

What they are not going to operate against is LeT or JuD and I don't see any reason why they will, because, in part, one piece of evidence that suggests to me that LeT remains on the leash of the ISI is that it has never targeted the Pakistani state. There is not a single attack against the Pakistani state that can be attributed to LeT. The relationship with JeM is a lot more complicated.

Then you don't see Pakistan giving up its support for terrorism?

While India's economy is booming and its relationship with the US, Israel and every other country is growing, Pakistan is becoming ever more diplomatically isolated. I think that as the power inequality between India and Pakistan expands, Pakistan is going to be more reliant on militancy not less. I think this idea that, as India becomes stronger and Pakistan becomes weaker, that Pakistan is simply going to capitulate and acquiesce is probably not going to happen. In fact, I see quite the opposite. I see Pakistan becoming ever more unable to shake free of this tool that it has developed - and from its point of view successfully - for the past six decades. Now, obviously this is not something that has been beneficial. It is eroding the state, it is driving the state ever more into a pariah status and it is destabilising the subcontinent. But from the Pakistani cost-benefit optic this has been something that has worked for it.

Now, since you 'trust' Chistine Fair so much then you must also trust her about what she says in the above interview.

I am dying to hear your reply and listen to you trying to get out of this argument. May be you will ignore my comments as you usually do.. Either way I want you to read it so that you will stop misquoting Christine Fair and reduce the reputation of RAND corporation.

Let us for one moment say India is indeed giving covert support to freedom fighters in Balochistan and Waziristan.. Now, what is wrong with that? Pakistan has supported militancy against India for more than 25 years! Any other country would have attacked Pakistan or started a covert war against it far sooner than India.. If India is indeed supporting terror against Pak then they are doing a heck of a job of it! They are even fooling the mighty CIA!!! RAW makes me proud.. I do feel sad however that Civilians are getting killed but you didnt care when Civilians died in Mumbai,did you.. We are just paying back in the same coin.. I have greater belief in Pakistani govt than you do and they cant be overrun by illiterate fanatics from the tribal areas.. Pakistan is too strong for that.. Correction, Pakistani army is too strong to let that happen.. But, I am sure India will continue to have the upper hand in any scenario..

Fair has not denied anything she said, just used the std technique of "quoted out of context" to please her hosts in India.

But what Fair said is just one piece of the puzzle. After failyre to "retaliate for Mumbai", there has been open talk of launching covert ops among India's former top spies, the appointment of Verma to head RAW, the intent, the motive and the opportunity to do so. All of it happened with the intensification of violence in Pakistan. And more recently, the discovery of Indian arms and equipment in Waziristan by Pak military.

Here's the view of India's involvement with the Taliban to foment trouble in Pakistan as seen by Laura Rozen in her article in Foreign Policy Magazine:

"While the U.S. media has frequently reported on Pakistani ties to jihadi elements launching attacks in Afghanistan, it has less often mentioned that India supports insurgent forces attacking Pakistan, the former intelligence official said. "The Indians are up to their necks in supporting the Taliban against the Pakistani government in Afghanistan and Pakistan," the former (US) intelligence official who served in both countries said. "The same anti-Pakistani forces in Afghanistan also shooting at American soldiers are getting support from India. India should close its diplomatic establishments in Afghanistan and get the Christ out of there.""

"Fair has not denied anything she said, just used the std technique of "quoted out of context" to please her hosts in India"

-----> Okaaay. If you say so. Very conveniently stated,Riaz.

"But what Fair said is just one piece of the puzzle. After failyre to "retaliate for Mumbai", there has been open talk of launching covert ops among India's former top spies, the appointment of Verma to head RAW, the intent, the motive and the opportunity to do so. All of it happened with the intensification of violence in Pakistan."

----> I donno how things are done in pakistan but every single action RAW takes has the approval of the Civilian administration. Hence, your charge directly charges Dr.Manmohan Singh with acts of terror. Good luck convincing people of the world that Prime Minister Singh is a Criminal.Also, there is a difference between discussion in the public domain and real action. Not all "discussions" in the media by some ex-servicemen will be accepted by the govt..And, not all support covert action against Pakistan.

Your charge that the Taliban are funded by a country whom the Taliban not long ago had vowed to fight is indeed very funny and in a way very serious considering its coming from a educated person in Pakistan who has access to a world of information on the internet. Remember, Baitulah Mehsud after Mumbai happened threatened to fight alongside the Pakistani army if India invades. Now, the same country he THREATENED is supporting him. Very convenient scapegoats we are,aren't we, Raiz?The press in Paksitan,especially the Urdu press, had said Baitullah Mehsud is a great patriot!!! Look at the sea change in the attitude.. Suddenly, India's foe is India's stooge?? This is a twist Dan Brown would have been proud of!

the mujahideens were created by the CIA and ISI to fight the soviets. after Soviet withdrawal ISI supported them to gain strategic depth AGAINST poor India against the wishes of Afghans. Now,all of a sudden,when the monster turned on its master, India is blamed!!!!!!!!

Lets say India is supporting them. So what??? Pakistan has been supporting militants for more than 25 years.. Shouldn't we answer in the same coin?We say stop supporting them if pakistan stops patronizing Kashmiri groups. Will you agree?You say if Taliban take over Paksitan,India will be in trouble. But, you also say they are our stooges! Why will they come after us!? Even if they are supported by us, they can NEVER overrun the Army to take control of Pakistan. I've tremendous confidence in the Pakistani army's hold over Paksitan. Shocking that you dont trust them to keep off the militants!!!!!!!!!! Very Shocking..Pakistani army is too powerful in Pakistan to let that happen.. Also, the world will probably bomb you to death if Taliban is in the verge to take over your nuclear assets..

"And more recently, the discovery of Indian arms and equipment in Waziristan by Pak military. "

----> Pakistani armed forces have a problem in admitting that their policy of "Strategic Depth" has bombed miserably!!! Hence, they want to blame it on forever-foe India to gain public support against fellow Pakistanis in Waziristan and especially "Muslims" of Waziristan! I cant believe you are naive enough to trust them!Look at what Hillary Clinton said when your very-brilliant-populist-media-persons asked her about 'India's interference in Balochitan'. She scolded you like a teacher scolds his/her naughty student.. Stop believing in conspiracy theories. You and people like you are hurting your country more than you think. You seem to be a milder version of Zaid Hamid. That guy is one big joker.

Regarding Laura Rozen. Who cares? majority opinion matters. Nobody with a sane mind would believe your story. You dont have proofs implicate India. Neither you will get it because- INDIA IS NOT SCREWING WITH YOU!

Anoop: "You dont have proofs implicate India. Neither you will get it because- INDIA IS NOT SCREWING WITH YOU!"

You can choose to deny the obvious; but it's only a matter of time before the truth comes out. It is becoming more and more clear that the US and world recognize Pakistan is too big to fail, and they will not tolerate India's dangerous game for long....something that will also prove to be an act of stupidity for Indians themselves. An unstable Pakistan is extremely dangerous for India in the long run.

If its so obvious why are you having so much difficulty convincing the world that India is meddling in your affairs? Why has the world already not noticed it?

"It is becoming more and more clear that the US and world recognize Pakistan is too big to fail, and they will not tolerate India's dangerous game for long"

Thats what I am saying. Pakistan is not too big but has a firm system in place,no matter if its under army control. Who will punish us if it is indeed true that we are guilty of making trouble? US? China? Who? What will they do? We are not an aid dependent country like Pakistan. We want their jobs and trade not their lousy money called aid.. We are always going to have an upper hand in any scenario. Also, Pakistan started this dangerous game,not us.. Now, the hunter has become the hunted and he doesnt like it. Well too bad..

"something that will also prove to be an act of stupidity for Indians themselves"

Why is it foolish on our part? We both agree that Pakistan cannot be overrun by ragtag criminals. India can suffer only if nukes fall into the hands of the Taliban,whom you accuse us of supporting. Then, how is this foolish?

Anoop: "If its so obvious why are you having so much difficulty convincing the world that India is meddling in your affairs? Why has the world already not noticed it?"

I am not trying to convince you or Indians of anything. Many in the world already recognize the reality of India-Pak conflict and how it's hurting regional peace, with potentially disastrous consequences for world peace. I am quite certain Obama and his advisers are not only aware of India's dirty role, I am quite sure they working on it in the background.

As to the US leverage with India, don't forget what happened when US put out a travel advisory for Americans in 2002 against going to India, and how India immediately decided to pull back its troops from the Pak border under threat of a nuclear confrontation.

In a globalized economy, India is more dependent on US, not less. In spite of all the hype, India is still a very poor, backward, third world nation dependent on aid and loans from IFCs which are directly or indirectly controlled by the Americans.

"In a globalized economy, India is more dependent on US, not less. In spite of all the hype, India is still a very poor, backward, third world nation dependent on aid and loans from IFCs which are directly or indirectly controlled by the Americans"

If that makes you happy, be happy. If ranking India on Hunger Index at 140 (or whatever number) against Pakistan 135 makes you happy, be happy.

Fact is India has it's own share of problem and so does Pakistan. If it makes you happy that india's share of problem is more prominent than pakistan's, be happy.

As long as Pakistan has leaders like Zardari and now Bilawal running the country, India do not need to worry about you.

"You can choose to deny the obvious; but it's only a matter of time before the truth comes out "

"I am quite certain Obama and his advisers are not only aware of India's dirty role, I am quite sure they working on it in the background."

-----> You have great intuition,Riaz. How well you know the ills of India and the peril it is under!!!!! Anyway, If USA is unable to control or convince a middle power like the US which is completely dependent on the US aid then how on earth can USA order India around?

"As to the US leverage with India, don't forget what happened when US put out a travel advisory for Americans in 2002 against going to India, and how India immediately decided to pull back its troops from the Pak border under threat of a nuclear confrontation."

----> You think India pulled out because US ordered us to? Dream on.. You clearly donno the politics in India and fiercely Indian politicians protest against what they might perceive to be interference in India's affairs.

"In a globalized economy, India is more dependent on US, not less. In spite of all the hype, India is still a very poor, backward, third world nation dependent on aid and loans from IFCs which are directly or indirectly controlled by the Americans."

----> The very concept of Globalization and free market is one country dependent on another. Our economy is dependent on their and US's is dependent on other's. But, that doesn't stand in the way of policy decisions. China exports are US oriented and US depends on China to buy its treasury bond. But, has this made China follow the US diktat on anything? Similarly with India. How well you know India. But, you must still be reading Times of India of 20 years ago. I suggest you to go and read the recent editions. India is growing,Riaz, and growing at breakneck speed,2nd only to China. But, I do agree with you when you say majority of Indians are poor. But, we have a stable system in place and doing everything in our power to reduce poverty. What,may I ask,Pakistan is doing to curb poverty? India has had a democratic system in place and its paying dividends now. Pakistan cannot even ask its Military to reduce its power and influence inside the country. India is considered to be a economic giant,Pakistan is considered to be the terror-central of the world. While the world gifts India a nuke deal,it constantly asks assurance from Pakistan about the safety of its nukes. Differences between our 2 countries,born at the same time,mind you,are huge.. Sadly, Jinnah's efforts have been futile. He would be turning in his grave looking at the mess Pakistan is in now. Progressive Pakistan continues be a romantic notion.

Anoop: "Differences between our 2 countries,born at the same time,mind you,are huge.. Sadly, Jinnah's efforts have been futile. He would be turning in his grave looking at the mess Pakistan is in now. Progressive Pakistan continues be a romantic notion."

There is some truth in what you say. But it's not the entire truth. Jinnah's vision of a secular, progressive Pakistan has not materialized, but nor has Nehru's vision of a socialist democracy that cares for its people. In spite of India's rapid economic growth, it is still one of the poorest, most backward nations in terms of hunger, poverty, disease, and very low levels of human development. Its "stable" system of democracy has continued to fail its people.

It is still one of the largest recipients of aid from UK, Europe, and various IFCs to improve the miserable lives of its ordinary citizens. In fact, India lags behind Pakistan in 5 of the 6 basic social indicators of availability of food, clothing, shelter, health care, sanitation and education.

"nor has Nehru's vision of a socialist democracy that cares for its people. In spite of India's rapid economic growth, it is still one of the poorest, most backward nations in terms of hunger, poverty, disease, and very low levels of human development. Its "stable" system of democracy has continued to fail its people."

----> Riaz, if reducing poverty were so easy then we would have done it long ago. Heck, Pakistan wouldn't have to go to country to country and ask for aid! There is 2 ways of getting out of this. 1) Democracy, 2) Chinese model of Communism.If you have any ideas please let us know and tell your brothers and sisters in Pakistan. I am not denying the poverty or other social ills that plague India but it is important what India is doing. It is important what are the people of India are doing. We have created a system of governance which is widely acknowledge across the world to work- Democracy. We have opened up our markets for others to come and invest. Our system is not perfect but it is damn good. It is self healing. There might be some errs along the way but the positives outshine the negatives in the long run.Due to all this factors India's rise is not seen as threatening as China's for the West. Pakistanis too,someday,have to make their choice. I know for sure they would rather be ruled by the Mullah than follow the 'god-less ideas of communism'. Democracy will be next best option for them. But, it will take ages for Democracy to produce desired results. I wonder if the Paksitani army will let the 'Civvis' be in power for that long.You cannot have Democracy and have a influential military at the same time. Will the Pakistani military its cherished,romantic position of guarding of Pakistani society and Country? Will they ever give up enough power to the Civilians to make sure that another coup doesn't take place, in a country which has been under military dictatorship for more than half its life,for ever?One might think there are no serious issues graver than poverty but in Pakistan they do exist..

BBC accuses Pakistan of double crossing.! This link speaks volumes of Pakistan's duplicity on the war on terror. No surprise there that it is being hunt down by the monster it created!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8348796.stm

it says- "The charge of cynicism arises because the Americans and the British support the Pakistan government - and the Pakistan government at the same time provides sanctuary in Quetta for the Afghan Taliban who are killing US and British troops.".

anoop: it says- "The charge of cynicism arises because the Americans and the British support the Pakistan government - and the Pakistan government at the same time provides sanctuary in Quetta for the Afghan Taliban who are killing US and British troops.".

There is nothing new here, these allegations have been made and rebutted repeatedly. ISI having contacts with Taliban does not mean they are supporting them. Most intelligence, including CIA and RAW, keep contact with some of the most unsavory characters in the world.

anoop: "It is important what are the people of India are doing. We have created a system of governance which is widely acknowledge across the world to work- Democracy."

I hate to break it to you but I don't see Indian democracy as having delivered anything for the poorest, most vulnerable members of society.

Please see the reality of India where poverty, hunger, slavery, murder and mayhem of the poor, the minorities and the dalits are daily occurrences.

Just look at your history of killings of Sikhs in 1980s, Orissa Christians in 2008, and Muslims since 1947, and you should realize the hateful Indian society where extreme religious bigotry Apartheid and slavery are still practiced widely, and the Maoists have taken up arms to defend the poor being assaulted by the Indian security forces.

"I hate to break it to you but I don't see Indian democracy as having delivered anything for the poorest, most vulnerable members of society. "----> Riaz, I hate to break it to YOU that democracy DOES work here.. I am a prime example for it. I came from a poor family, studied in a govt run school, again studied in a govt-aided college and then took a loan and did my Engineering. Now, I am employed in IBM and my days of hardship are long gone. Now, I vote regularly every time there is an election. And, I've seen with my own eyes my friends,who had it tougher than me becoming self sufficient. Now, the people we have voted for are giving us better roads,better electricity supply,better water supply,etc.. So, Riaz, Democracy in India DOES work and its working fabulously. I wonder how many times you have been here. Shall I take a guess? I'd say ZERO! You seem to know a lot about India without even coming here. India is growing at a high rate and the elimination of poverty at this rate is inevitable. I'd not like to brush aside your opinions completely. India is a huge country when compared to a country like Pakistan. In Pakistan you can goto any place,I dont know,if you travel 500 Kms(approx). Its not so with India. There are pockets of wealth here. I can point out some states in India which have been traditionally backward economically when compared to other states. Like states like West Bengal,Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and a few more. Even Kashmir was thriving before you guys started with the proxy war(for which you are suffering now with daily bomb blasts). I also would like to point out states which have done exceedingly done well: All southern states have done well, Gujrat, Maharashtra, Himachal, even Uttar Pradesh when you consider its city Gurgaun, Noida,New Delhi,etc are leaders.In India there is a lot of migration going on. The poor from the less-privileged states are migrating to the states I just mentioned. Some people in their naivety tend to generalize every single news coming out of India. Especially with the bad news. Well, if you look at India from a neutral perspective you will find India a jewel in the world with its multi-ethnic population, with all the the major religions are practiced here,basically the incredible diversity this place has to offer. India is a democracy to top it all and the 2nd fastest growing economy. We give hope to the world. As a Pakistani, I understand, your ego comes in the way to do a neutral analysis of a country which is opposite to the Idea of Pakistan in every way. But, please, stop and think before you generalize anything about India.

"Just look at your history of killings of Sikhs in 1980s, Orissa Christians in 2008, and Muslims since 1947, and you should realize the hateful Indian society where extreme religious bigotry Apartheid and slavery are still practiced widely, and the Maoists have taken up arms to defend the poor being assaulted by the Indian security forces."----> Again, you are generalizing. India is a country which has a 20% non-Hindu population. Have you any idea how hard it is for India to maintain a clean record? Pakistan has a lousy 3% minority. It quite amazingly came down from 20% to 3% in just 60 years after partition. Contrarily India's share has remained the same. Pakistan if it had a even 10% minority population then it would have found out how India's job really is. I dont want to argue negatively by pointing out the plight of minorities in Paksitan like the recent Koran burning rumor that led to the brutal killings of Christians. That would defeat the purpose. But, if Jinnah existed now,if given a choice of picking a country on the successes of 62 years he would probably go with a multi-religious,multi-ethnic,secular,democratic,plural society like India. He would regret the very fact that Pakistan has not been able to establish even a semblance of a democracy in the 60 long years! It would probably send him to the grave again if he finds out that Pakistan was under Military memn for more than half of its lifetime! Riaz, with all due respect, if you concentrate of criticizing YOUR so called Civilian govt for its policies(even though we all know who the boss is- the army) then you would contribute more to Pakistan. Now, you are just satisfying your ego by writing about India. Good luck.

anoop: "So, Riaz, Democracy in India DOES work and its working fabulously. I wonder how many times you have been here. Shall I take a guess? I'd say ZERO! You seem to know a lot about India without even coming here..."

I have been to India several times, including earlier this decade. And I have visited both cities and villages in India, Pakistan, China, Malaysia, and many other Asian and African countries. And I can tell you with confidence that I have not seen the kind of poverty and desperation that exists in India any where else.

I am glad to hear you are doing well. I am happy for you and others like to you who have been able to get out of poverty through education. Unfortunately, there are hundreds of millions of others, whose numbers have grown this decade, for whom Indian democracy has not worked as a participant.

The worst of them are the 250 million Dalits who live a life of slavery and poverty.

"I have been to India several times, including earlier this decade. And I have visited both cities and villages in India, Pakistan, China, Malaysia, and many other Asian and African countries. And I can tell you with confidence that I have not seen the kind of poverty and desperation that exists in India any where else."

--->Riaz, Thank you for coming to India. Hope you had a good stay here. India as you know is the 7th largest country in the world. I am very curious how much territory did you cover during all your visits. I am conceding there is poverty and hunger here. I've made this point before. But, what I am saying is India is changing for the better. After 1991 reforms our poverty has reduced. China started its reforms in the 70's under Deng Xiaping(apologies if i've got the name wrong). After 30+ years its in this stage. India has started its reforms very late and the dynamics of the cold war was to blame. India since 1991 has made rapid strides. Riaz, haven't you ever wondered why there is so much press about India's growth? Because of the potential and the success India has tasted after 1991.I advice you to visit places like Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Mumbai(if you haven't visited already),Gurgaon, Noida,Hyderabad (or Cyberabad as it is popular nowadays), Cochin,etc.. These very cities are going to house 50% of India's population in the next few decades. I am not saying it but the UN is.. I've told you about Migration from poorer regions to richer ones thats taking place. If you visit these cities I've just mentioned you might be tempted to generalize,although you might not, positives thats happening in India.Like it or not India is improving and its democratic institutions are self-healing. Corruption in India is on the rise as India incorporates IT in its administration. You might have read about Nandan Nilekani,an IIT alumni,Co-Founder of Infosys,heading a team that promises to issue Biometric cards to 1.2 Billion people on a scale never attempted in world History. These are the kind of examples that makes you think India's growth is here to stay. India,like it or not, is well on its way to become the next super power after China.

"Unfortunately, there are hundreds of millions of others, whose numbers have grown this decade, for whom Indian democracy has not worked as a participant."---> I totally agree with you. 1st step towards reducing poverty is recognizing it exists. With its stable institutions and rapid economic growth India is gonna reduce a huge chunk of Poverty. Are there any stable institutions or rapid economic growth in Pakistan,the land of the pure,where Muslims were promised progress that seemed impossible in India? NO.

"The worst of them are the 250 million Dalits who live a life of slavery and poverty."--->I appreciate how much you care about the oppressed Dalits of India. Only if you had showed that kind of sympathy towards your fellow Muslims in East Pakistan while they very being butchered by your all-powerful army, your country would not have faced 2nd partition. Riaz, as for Dalits in India they are constitutionally empowered and many States have had Dalit Chief Ministers. The present example being Mayawati who is the CM of Uttar Pradesh. In fact, the person responsible for writing our constitution is Dr.Ambedkar,a Dalit. Like the Racism against the Blacks in the US, this discrimination is also ending. I am very sure Paksitanis will criticize until this discrimination stops. Thank you for contributing in India's social development,Riaz.

The world is recognizing the fact that Pakistan alone is responsible for the deadly terror blowback it is facing now. Pakistan's past support of militant groups to obtain "strategic depth" or strategic objectives is being criticized the world over. Now, a French author claims that LeT, ISI's pet, had planned a 9/11 in Paris by destroying the iconic Eiffel Towers. The sad thing is LeT is still being supported by the ISI. Once bitten twice shy clearly doesn't apply to the ISI and the Pakistan army.

Pakistan's renowned Journalist Ayesha Siddiqa countering the myth that India is behind the Terrorist attacks in Balochistan and else where in Pakistan as claimed by the Blog's author and the Urdu Media in Pakistan.

Anoop: Ayesha Siddiqa is making the mistake of assuming that TTTP alone is carrying out the murder and mayhem in Pakistan, while dismissing India's motives, urgings, and opportunities as spelled out in former RAW officials writings, to conduct covert war in Pakistan as payback for perceived involvement of ISI in terror in India.

I don't understand why it is such a surprise to you or Ayesha Sidiqa that RAW would be using TTP to fish in Pakistan's troubled waters at this time. After all, RAW's main charter is to destabilize Pakistan, as understood by the professionals in this business.

"I don't understand why it is such a surprise to you or Ayesha Sidiqa that RAW would be using TTP to fish in Pakistan's troubled waters at this time. After all, RAW's main charter is to destabilize Pakistan, as understood by the professionals in this business."

---> Fabulous.. So Pakistan and Pakistanis are cleared of any wrongdoings in the past. So, India is the reason for all of Pakistan's terror-related ills. I would like to quote Ayesha Siddiqa to counter your argument where she says,"The above interview came a couple of days after the army claimed to have found evidence of India’s involvement in the conflict in Waziristan. Islamabad should take the evidence to the International Court of Justice since it does not hope to get a fair hearing from anyone else in the world, certainly not the US."Why doesn't Pakistan just do that? Or, do you think even the international court is biased against Pakistan?RAW sole purpose is to collect evidence. If there is evidence(and tonnes of it as claimed by the Urdu media) then just go ahead and show it to the world! What is Pakistan and Riaz Haq waiting for?

"former RAW officials writings, to conduct covert war in Pakistan as payback for perceived involvement of ISI in terror in India."

Such kind of speculation and strategies are drawn by every country's intelligence community. It is upto the Civilian administration to decide if it is fair and beneficial to the country. Ayesha Siddiqa asks in one of her articles,"what would India achieve by supporting the Taliban?" I ask the same question to you. After mumbai last year when Baitullah Mehsud claimed to fight alongside Pakistani army if India attacks. Then, he was hailed as a hero and a real patriot by your media. What do you have to say about that episode? How quickly the Pious man went with the enemy!

Anoop: ""what would India achieve by supporting the Taliban?" I ask the same question to you.After mumbai last year when Baitullah Mehsud claimed to fight alongside Pakistani army if India attacks."

Ayesha and you clearly do not understand, or don't want to understand, how the intelligence agencies operate. They do a lot of tactical, temporary alliance for specific objectives. TTP is a tool available to them now to do just that, to Pakistan on its backfoot while slandering it as a terror hub.

A Washington publication the Hill" has a report on Pak Ambassador Haqqani's "candid assessment" of US-Pak relations:

Husain Haqqani offered a candid assessment of where Pakistan stands at my IFE / INFO Global Connections Public Policy Roundtable last Friday. In addition to being Pakistan’s youngest ambassador to the U.S., Haqqani was a strong advocate of the late Benazir Bhutto, who stood as a symbol of democracy in a country where dictatorship has long prevailed.

Pakistanis, Haqqani noted, believe that the U.S. has long used their country, not engaged it. Hillary Clinton’s trip there was significant to the extent that they saw a different side of our country. In attending town halls and visiting colleges and universities, she tried to demonstrate that the U.S. is genuinely concerned with Pakistan’s welfare. Polls showed that Pakistani approval ratings of the U.S. went up by 7 percent after her visit. Unfortunately, though, one high-profile visit is unlikely to do much, because many of the country’s woes are historically rooted. Pakistanis had no idea what suicide bombers were prior to 9/11. The U.S. supported radical Islamists in their fight against the Soviet Union, but it’s precisely those Islamists who are now waging jihad across the globe, including in Pakistan; many Pakistanis regard the Taliban as an existential threat to their country.

Although Pakistan’s economy is back on track (largely due to IMF lending), insecurity limits its ability to achieve sustained economic growth. It shares a border with a hostile neighbor (India), with a desperately poor country in which the Taliban is reasserting its influence (Afghanistan), and with a nation that’s in the midst of tremendous domestic upheaval (Iran). Being in a near-constant struggle against internal and external threats, real and imagined, has its consequences: Pakistan spends far more on defense than education, with the result that the country has only a 38 percent literacy rate. As both Ambassador Said Jawad of Afghanistan and Ambassador Husain Haqqani say, "We live in a dangerous neighborhood."

Haqqani noted that India is perhaps the biggest elephant in the room. Pakistan is wary of the Indo-U.S. relationship, which is robust and multifaceted. He mentioned that India is Boeing’s largest customer, and also that 26 members of the Obama administration are Indian-American; facts like these naturally make Pakistan nervous.

As much as it’s concerned with India, Pakistan is also anxious to see how its relationship with the U.S. evolves. Haqqani noted that Pakistanis want to receive credit for their counterterrorism efforts; Pakistan has killed or captured more al Qaeda leaders than has any other country. He concluded by saying that the U.S. won’t truly be able to win hearts and minds there until it adopts a more comprehensive engagement strategy — one that has a political element and a socioeconomic element. Haqqani encouraged American companies to invest in Pakistan, offering a Thomas Friedman-like thought that Pakistanis need to be making boxer shorts for Wal-Mart, not boxes of bombs.

Whether or not that hope is realized will depend a lot on how Pakistan’s military fares against the Taliban. Let’s hope that it succeeds.

Kathy Kemper is founder and CEO of the Institute for Education, a nonprofit foundation that recognizes and promotes leadership and civility locally, nationally and in the world community.Source:http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/foreign-policy/67203-diagnosing-pakistan

Here's a report in India Today about India's business community recommending inflicting pain on Pakistan:

The FICCI Task Force Report on National Security and Terrorism has underlined the need for a 'national counter-terrorism architecture' which establishes a national counter-terrorism agency, a national intelligence grid, a ministry of internal security with a cabinet minister and a new intelligence agency dedicated to non-state actors.

The report of the FICCI Task Force that was presented to Home Minister P. Chidambaram on Monday has made wide-ranging recommendations to counter the threat to India's security from cross-border jihadi terrorism and Naxalite insurgency.

Addressing media persons, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, MP and Immediate Past President, FICCI, and Chairman of the FICCI Task Force Report on National Security and Terrorism, expressed deep concern over the extent to which a pattern of contemporary jihad and home-grown terrorism has manifested itself in India.

The report documents how Pakistan's dubious policies on terrorism and its military establishment infused with jihadist mindset will continue to threaten India's security in the coming years.

The report points out that that Pakistan will maintain its infrastructure of terrorism - the networks that recruit, train, equip and finance jihadis - inside Pakistani territory. In this context, the task force recommended leveraging international cooperation by co-opting foreign expertise for developing capacity, monitoring movements of terrorist leaders, and sharing information and knowledge with them; developing capabilities for covert and overt operations on terrorist locations, a common investigation cell for whole of India, a calibrated and well defined decision-making process and accountability at various levels, place strong 'immediate response' mechanism and tailor-made terrorism prevention and incident management drills for each metro city, vulnerability assessment to identify areas and establishments requiring necessary security measures and incorporating the private sector and civil society into India's war on terror.

The report reflects on what has emerged as India's biggest internal security threat - Maoist insurgency and the lack of a robust institutional mechanism to deal with them. The government's approach toward Naxalite insurgency has so far recorded limited success, with each affected state developing its own security response.

The task force's assessment is that the lack of coordination between national, state and local security services and lack of developmental initiatives leading to increased urban-rural divide have prevented a containment of the Naxalite threat.

The task force is convinced that Pakistan has to make a clean break from its existing state policy of supporting terrorism. Meanwhile, India needs to build up its capabilities to counter Pakistani state designs, if it doesn't disown terrorism and come clean, the task force recommends.

"Ayesha and you clearly do not understand, or don't want to understand, how the intelligence agencies operate. They do a lot of tactical, temporary alliance for specific objectives. TTP is a tool available to them now to do just that, to Pakistan on its backfoot while slandering it as a terror hub."

---> Riaz,I am very much interested based on what evidence are you claiming that India is interfering? Just because Pakistan is suffering from a blowback of its past support of Militants doesn't mean India has to support the militants. ISI after all has trained its students well! If they can carry out a cross border, high-risk, highly organized operation like Mumbai then they can definitely can blow themselves up inside their own home country. Why is that so hard to believe? If the evidence you have is so conclusive then go ahead and show it to the world! Tell how bad India has been. Ask China to start a resolution in the security counsel to ask India to stop support of terror based on those "evidences". Or, get a Red-corner notice by presenting the evidence to the Interpol against those Indians who are up-to mischief! Can you do any of the above mentioned things? If you have had evidence you would have done those things already.If militants can fight the mighty,technologically advanced NATO troops then they can definitely fight the Pakistan Society. After all what skills do you need to go and blow up yourself in a market place? Prey tell me. If you are talking about guns and ammo then please tell me how the Afghan Taliban are getting them. It might be the case that the Agency who is supplying weapons to Afghani Taliban is giving weapons to TTP also! After all neighbors share stuff with each other..Learn to face the facts. Pakistan is suffering a blow back from its past support of militants in Afghanistan and in India. Please dont drag us into YOUR mess. You created them, armed them,taught them how to fight,now they ARE fighting but not the intended enemy.. I am just glad that they are teaching a lesson to Pakistan and not targeting India,NATO and Afghanistan. Pakistan is making up for its past sins.. You created them, you deal with them. Let this be a lesson for you all....

"And they are blowing themselves up in the streets of Pakistan, choosing targets that please their new paymasters in Delhi. "

--->Riaz, How do you know that India is paying them to blow themselves up!? You have some solid proof? Also, who pays a person who is going to die! If a person is laying down his life money is very unlikely to be a driving factor for the suicide or the Fidayeen attack. They think they are fighting for Islam. Only a foolish thing like that can drive them to commit suicide. The key word is suicide. You can pay someone to kill another,like a mercenary. But, not to commit suicide. You argument goes against logic! A guy takes money to commit suicide that he cant even enjoy! Clearly, "a higher purpose" is at stake here. Islam is that higher purpose according to them. I know your next argument will be India is paying the masters of those attackers who brainwash them to commit suicide. If thats the case then Pakistan can also "pay" them to NOT blow themselves up right? You guys are getting 1.5 Billion dollars every year from the US and much more from Friends of Pakistan group,right? I am sure the mighty Pakistani army and intelligence set up can spare a little change to "bribe" the Jihadis-that is ofcourse,if they are really doing it for the money as you claim. You can also tell them, dont kill Muslims and target the infidels in Afghanistan or target India,especially Kashmir. Thats killing 2 birds with a single stone,right?What do you have to say for that? Good idea,right?

"As to the world, particularly US government, they only choose to see and believe what they want based on their own interests at the time. No amount of proof will suffice for them."--->Riaz, you haven't even tried giving the evidence and jumping to conclusions. This clearly shows you are trying to have your cake and eat it too! Show the world the "evidence" first. IF they dont respond you can claim that.. Without producing the proofs how do you know their response? You have a sixth sense of something?US is not the only country in the world. You have a powerful ally in China for godsakes! And, all the OIC members.. Your muslim ummah! See, how many options you have. US is not the only country in the world whose opinion matters. Then there is the EU and the whole UN at your disposal,that is ofcourse you have the evidence,which I am very sure is a fragment of imagination!WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE,RIAZ? WHEN IS YOUR GOVT GOING TO PROVE INDIA'S MISCHIEF?

"And they are blowing themselves up in the streets of Pakistan, choosing targets that please their new paymasters in Delhi. "

--->Riaz, How do you know that India is paying them to blow themselves up!? You have some solid proof? Also, who pays a person who is going to die! If a person is laying down his life money is very unlikely to be a driving factor for the suicide or the Fidayeen attack. They think they are fighting for Islam. Only a foolish thing like that can drive them to commit suicide. The key word is suicide. You can pay someone to kill another,like a mercenary. But, not to commit suicide. You argument goes against logic! A guy takes money to commit suicide that he cant even enjoy! Clearly, "a higher purpose" is at stake here. Islam is that higher purpose according to them. I know your next argument will be India is paying the masters of those attackers who brainwash them to commit suicide. If thats the case then Pakistan can also "pay" them to NOT blow themselves up right? You guys are getting 1.5 Billion dollars every year from the US and much more from Friends of Pakistan group,right? I am sure the mighty Pakistani army and intelligence set up can spare a little change to "bribe" the Jihadis-that is ofcourse,if they are really doing it for the money as you claim. You can also tell them, dont kill Muslims and target the infidels in Afghanistan or target India,especially Kashmir. Thats killing 2 birds with a single stone,right?What do you have to say for that? Good idea,right?

"As to the world, particularly US government, they only choose to see and believe what they want based on their own interests at the time. No amount of proof will suffice for them."

--->Riaz, you haven't even tried giving the evidence and jumping to conclusions. This clearly shows you are trying to have your cake and eat it too! Show the world the "evidence" first. IF they dont respond you can claim that.. Without producing the proofs how do you know their response? You have a sixth sense or something?US is not the only country in the world. You have a powerful ally in China for godsakes! And, all the OIC members.. Your muslim ummah! See, how many options you have. US is not the only country in the world whose opinion matters. Then there is the EU and the whole UN at your disposal,that is ofcourse you have the evidence,which I am very sure is a fragment of imagination!WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE,RIAZ? WHEN IS YOUR GOVT GOING TO PROVE INDIA'S MISCHIEF?

Anoop: "If a person is laying down his life money is very unlikely to be a driving factor for the suicide or the Fidayeen attack. They think they are fighting for Islam. Only a foolish thing like that can drive them to commit suicide."

The person blowing himself up is a brainwashed robot who doesn't know where the money is coming from to pay his family after his death.

Anoop: "You haven't even tried giving the evidence and jumping to conclusions."

I do not need to find solid evidence for something so obvious, the circumstantial case is well established in my post. This is not the kind of thing that can be dealt with in a court with standard rules of evidence. This is war.

But I am sure Pakistani government is discovering evidence in terms of money, make/manufacture of equipment and origin of explosives on a daily basis. After all, India has over a dozen consulates in a small nation of Afghanistan. What do they do? Issues a few visas now and then in a war-torn nation?

And,as I said, the world only sees and believes what suits them at any given point in time. Right now, the Indians operating in Afghanistan under the noses of the Americans to destabilize Pakistan.

Kashmiri traders have condemned a report published by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) that proposed that India should inflict “economic pain” on Pakistan. The 118-page (FICCI) report also called for choking water resources, covert retaliation and surgical strikes against Islamabad in order to address terrorism in India. The Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) and other trade bodies in Srinagar met in an emergency meeting on Thursday and called the report “irresponsible and immature”. The KCCI said the development was “serious”. “The apex business chamber should have devoted time to formulating policies for the economic prosperity of the country. It has unfortunately indulged in political gimmicks, and that too with gruesome mindset against a neighbouring country,” the KCCI members said in a statement. Federation of Chambers of Industry in Kashmir (FCIK) President Shakil Qalander said at a time when the world needed peace, the FICCI was advocating strategies that could clearly lead to war. The KCCI asked world economic bodies to take note of the FICCI’s “war rhetoric” and support the quest for peace and stability in the region by helping settle the Kashmir dispute. “The suggestion of launching a military offensive is not new and has been tried on four occasions previously. It has only ended in a typical cycle of war breeding war,” the statement added. iftikhar gilani

"The person blowing himself up is a brainwashed robot who doesn't know where the money is coming from to pay his family after his death."

---> So,Riaz,so you are telling me that India is paying Muslims to kill other Muslims through TTP,an organization that has had past support of the Pakistani army. And, who claim they are fighting the Islam. If that is the case why cant the Pakistani army make a deal with them as they have in the past? They can say we will give you money and wont interfere in your affairs if you dont kill our civilians! This is a novel idea,right? India will then be beaten in its game. What do you think? After all the army is not new to making deals with the militants. They have done it dozens of times! I am sure a nuclear power that Pakistan is can afford to make such deals,especially after its getting so much of aid from every corner of the world!

"I do not need to find solid evidence for something so obvious, the circumstantial case is well established in my post. This is not the kind of thing that can be dealt with in a court with standard rules of evidence. This is war."---> So let me get this straight. You dont have evidence. None. And, you are claiming India is supporting an organization,who have vowed in the past that they would fight Jihad in India,based on motive and your gut feeling? This is what I wanted to hear from you,Riaz. I know that you dont have any evidence! You aren't going to find any either! Let me break it to you.You cannot charge someone based on motive. I thought you will come up with better argument than that! I want you to admit that past policies of the Pakistani army have backfired miserably. Now,instead of admitting they were wrong they are putting the blame on India! Gullible people like you and others in Pakistan actually believe that lie. You have let your army off the hook for forming policies and decisions that have led to failure and widespread mayhem within the country it has vowed to protect.Your army is not man enough to stand up and say,"I am responsible for this mess. Let me clean this up".

Riaz,please post that India is aiding militants when Pakistan has hardcore evidence and motive is just not enough to convince anyone.

"After all, India has over a dozen consulates in a small nation of Afghanistan. What do they do? "

---> Again,you are reading your Urdu newspapers way too much. India has one embassy and 4 consulates in Afghanistan. 4 not a dozen. Again, you dont have any evidence. Please find out how many consulates other countries have and compare. Have you done that before claiming India has way too many consulates in Afghanistan?

"Right now, the Indians operating in Afghanistan under the noses of the Americans to destabilize Pakistan."---> If thats the case then they are more powerful than I had thought. They have fooled the mighty CIA. Riaz,how do you think India is getting inside Afghanistan? It is because Afghans and most importantly Iranians want us there. Iran is the route through which we get our supplies to Afghanistan. Iran and us have one thing in common-hatred for the Taliban. No country in this world can force India out of Afghanistan,expect Iran. Not even the US.

anoop: "India is paying Muslims to kill other Muslims through TTP,an organization that has had past support of the Pakistani army."

It's clear you don't know TTP. It's not an org ever supported by Pakistan. These are enemies of Pakistan.

anoop: "Riaz. I know that you dont have any evidence!"

I am not an intelligence agency. I blog about what I see as a clear sign based on former RAW agents openly expressed aspirations to launch covert war in Pakistan, followed by an appointment of RAW chief that pleased them. I also have quoted to you from former US CIA agents who have worked with both RAW and ISI. As I said, there is none so blind who will not see.

anoop: "No country in this world can force India out of Afghanistan,expect Iran. Not even the US."

Don't forget India followed US occupation into Afghanistan. Prior to that, the Indian allies in Northern Alliance were a badly defeated non-entity. India will be there only as long as US is there.

"It's clear you don't know TTP. It's not an org ever supported by Pakistan. These are enemies of Pakistan."

--->Riaz, TTP as an organization is a mixture of various factions of the Taliban.. Correct? Taliban in Afghanistan did get support from Pakistan. Correct? After Afghanistan was attacked by NATO Taliban fled and went into Waziristan,North and South. Correct? Musharaff is accused of letting these taliban in and even making the deals with the factions that sprung up after the Taliban got into Waziristan after 9/11. Even the Civilians in Pakistan tried to deal with the faction of Fazlullah. TTP is made up of different factions of the Taliban. Now, even the Kashmiri Jihadis are joining the party. Remember,Lashkar-e-Jhangvi? They had support of the Pakistani army. Direct support. Does a Terrorist from LeJ need a No Objection Certificate(NOC) to gang up with the TTP? And,your intelligence have confirmed that LeJ have turned against the army.. Do you still think Pakistan never supported militants?Only if Pakistan had not supported the Taliban in the past whatever mayhem that is occurring would not have taken place.

"As I said, there is none so blind who will not see. " --->I am yet to see any worth while person from the world capitals responding to your accusations based on flimsy motives.

"Don't forget India followed US occupation into Afghanistan. Prior to that, the Indian allies in Northern Alliance were a badly defeated non-entity. India will be there only as long as US is there."

---> In the past we didnt try that hard and gave up. We didnt even try to support the northern alliance materially. Lot of time has passed and the challenge is to arm the NA to such an extent they can fight the fight the Taliban can. There is already a plan in NATO to send trainers and a request to the world to train the Afghan army.. India will gladly help in this matter. It will even arm them after NATO troops get out! Iran will not stand in the way. NATO will not move for another 5 years out of Afghanistan. Or atleast 3.5 years when the next American presidential election is due. That is ample time for us to train the Afghan army. It wont be strong enough to defeat the Taliban at 1st but enough to contain them. In time we can eventually build on their strength and teach them to stand on their feet. Remember, the world is not going to tolerate Pakistani support to the Taliban even after NATO moves out. Pakistan already dependent on US aid will listen to whatever the US says and demands. Even so now since NATO has moved out and they dont have to please Pakistan anymore. Just yesterday I heard ISAF commander asking countries to train the Afghan army. I also heard from him US is training the Afghans to guard themselves as they see this is the only way out for NATO- A strong Afghan army. The days of the Taliban rule in Afghanistan are over. We will make sure of that.I wonder what will Pakistan's next move will be.

@Mr Haq>> Don't forget India followed US occupation into Afghanistan. Prior to that, the Indian allies in Northern Alliance were a badly defeated non-entity. India will be there only as long as US is there.

Oh so you now conveniently choose to forget that it was Pakistan who propped up Taliban in Afghanistan at first place. In-fact it was Pakistan which was the last state to have diplomatic relations with them. India always opposed Taliban, India still opposes them. Indian interests lied with Northern Alliance before, and they still are. The only thing which has changed is that with Pakistan supporting US against Taliban, they have turned against Pakistan.

Calling Pakistani Taliban monsters and Afghani Taliban as pure is simply insane. And regarding RAW supporting Pakistani Taliban, again, thats another concoction to win over at-least some support of Pakistani people against Taliban, (the pure as per your definition).

With more than 2000+ attacks on Pakistan last year, and with no Indian getting caught, it can mean only the following:1) Indian involvement with these is a figment of your imagination2) People in Pakistan are getting brainwashed3) Higher-ups in decision making in Pakistan are involved somehow in these acts of terror or supporting those involved4) All of above

Afzal: "The only thing which has changed is that with Pakistan supporting US against Taliban, they have turned against Pakistan."

Obviously, you do not understand that Taliban is not a monolith...the term is loosely applied to all Pushtoon fighters, some of whom are hurting their own people.

Afzal: "and with no Indian getting caught,"

There is no need for them to use Indians when there are plenty of TTP bombers available to them to do their dirty deeds. As they say, the enemy of your enemy is your friend.

It's possible that there would have been occasional incidents of bombings by the TTP on their own, but the recent concerted and intense campaign requires external support from someone like to RAW to hit their enemies in Pakistani state, regardless of the civilian human toll.

"There is no need for them to use Indians when there are plenty of TTP bombers available to them to do their dirty deeds. As they say, the enemy of your enemy is your friend."

---> This statement of your achieves real significance since you are basing this on real,solid MOTIVE! Who charges a person on motive.. Even,this case of motives has loopholes. The loopholes being that Taliban if they come to power will hurt India more than the current dispensation! So, it'd be foolish for India to arm the Taliban. In this case you are clearly charging India based on your bias and hatred towards India. Nothing more.

"t's possible that there would have been occasional incidents of bombings by the TTP on their own, but the recent concerted and intense campaign requires external support from someone like to RAW to hit their enemies in Pakistani state, regardless of the civilian human toll."

---> What kind of support does TTP really require anyway?!! Does the Afghan Taliban require help to terrorize the NATO troops and Afghans alike? Similarly with the TTP. After all a military establishment has taught them how to prepare bombs,fire grenades and draw up strategies for Guirella warfare. ISI has been a good teacher but the Taliban,ironic considering their name, have not been a good student-They have attacked the very people who taught them how to fight-The ISI..! Tell me Riaz,what possible help can India extend to the TTP that ability they already dont possess? If India is extending help then it would also mean that some other friendly military organization is also helping the Afghan Taliban as they too possess the same capabilities!Clearly you dont understand guirella warfare.

"Witnesses: I have quoted to you former US intelligence officials who are certain Indian RAW is playing in both Afghanistan and Pakistan."

---> Who are they? I will quote Hillary Clinton when she says she has not found any evidence against India. I know you will say she is lying because she doesn't want to offend India. But, you know how Washington works. If they want the world to know something and they cant confront you they will just intentionally leak the sufficient info to the media. Since, they have not it can be safely assumed there is nothing to leak. But, if you have "concrete" proof what is stopping you to leak the info to world media? Or the UN? or the EU? or the OIC? or China? I asked you this last time and you chose not to reply. What is stopping you to tell whom Pakistan considers as "brothers",who apparently cant seem to spare a dime for Pakistan in its hour of need? Have you considered the possibility of Pakistani army planting these so called evidences in order to mask its own failure when its policies have backfired? How easy it would be to tell the gullible Pakistanis,"we are not at fault here,the enemy-India is responsible for all the mess". It wouldn't be such a challenge for them to plant a couple of Indian made weapons which they could have brought from the world market or from smugglers. This is not hard for ISI to do. They are just masking their failures-in foreign policy and domestic. They also have another motive in doing this. They want the world to think that India is in Afghanistan for other purposes than development. They are scared that they have to face a 2-front situation and they are exploiting their own domestic situation in telling the world that India is the cause. People like you and the Urdu press will readily believe whatever the military says. I have NEVER seen you questioning its policies of "strategic depth" in Afghanistan or the deals made by Mushy in Waziristan. You have this romantic notion of your military that it clearly doesn't deserve as it is an organization which has ruled Pakistan for more than half its life and not able make Pakistan even barely self-sufficient in any matter!!When your own people like Ayesha Siddiqa,a renowned journalist in Pakistan and one of the best in South Asia try to question the rationale of such pointless accusations against India, you and your Urdu press cant take it. Your military is a selfish organization which has ruled Pakistan for more than 30 years to serve its own needs at the expense of Pakistan's future.And,you wonder why no country in the world doesn't believe us when you say India is the culprit here. They as outsiders know your army better than you do and dont buy its accusations.Your pro-people army couldn't tolerate when KLB was announced. It only wanted Military to cut to its size by supporting the Civilian Govt-The 1st time US is supplying aid to the Civilians. So, start questioning your military,Riaz. They have done more harm to Pakistan than any enemy..

anoop: "Who are they? I will quote Hillary Clinton when she says she has not found any evidence against India. I know you will say she is lying because she doesn't want to offend India."

Hillary Clinton is not an intelligence agent or someone who's been involved with intelligence people on the ground. And even if she does know the truth, she won't reveal it because it's against US policy to anger India.

anoop: "I asked you this last time and you chose not to reply. What is stopping you to tell whom Pakistan considers as "brothers",who apparently cant seem to spare a dime for Pakistan in its hour of need?"

You are just showing your ignorance. A number of them are part of "Friends of Pakistan" consortium aiding Pakistan right now. It's just that their aid and loans are not played up as in the same way as US aid because of its highly controversial nature.

anoop: "I have NEVER seen you questioning its policies of "strategic depth" in Afghanistan or the deals made by Mushy in Waziristan."

It's clear that you are not a regular reader of my blog.

anoop: "When your own people like Ayesha Siddiqa,a renowned journalist in Pakistan and one of the best in South Asia try to question the rationale of such pointless accusations against India, you and your Urdu press cant take it."

Ayesha Siddiqa is part of the anti-military, self-styled liberal gang in Pakistan that wants to destroy the only working institution left in the country that is capable to maintaining its unity. Without this institution, who would fight the simultaneous threats from East and West? She has no credibility with the people. Right now, the Army is far more popular than any politician, institution or commentator in Pakistan because they are fighting and dying for Pakistan as we speak.

anoop: "Your pro-people army couldn't tolerate when KLB was announced"

Again, you don't know the facts. The facts are that majority of the people in Pakistan distrust US motives and US aid, based on all of the polls. In fact US is seen by Pakistanis with much greater suspicion that India.

"Hillary Clinton is not an intelligence agent or someone who's been involved with intelligence people on the ground."--> I couldn't believe you made such an immature statement.FYI,she is the secretary of state.Please Google what a secretary of state does and get back to me. I've already pointed out how US works with its intentional leaks.Like recently,it was leaked that China supplied 50 K of enriched Uranium to kick start Pakistan's nuclear program. Do you really think it was an unintentional leak? If they really had evidence they would leak the appropriate amount to warn India that they know what we are upto. Since,they haven't leaked any such story we can safely assume there is no such evidence that you keep talking about.

"A number of them are part of "Friends of Pakistan" consortium aiding Pakistan right now. It's just that their aid and loans are not played up as in the same way as US aid because of its highly controversial nature."---> Riaz, 2 things. 1st thing is I know 5 Billion was pledged but prey tell me how much has it been delivered to Pakistan? Also,Saudi Arabia gave about $ 300 million to Pakistan. Not as AID but LOAN! Atleast if you get a loan from the IMF they will be strict and keep a watch on how the economy is managed. Now,you can imagine how that 300 million will be sent. Its a pity that a country which Pakistan consider its "brother" has given a loan and NOT aid. India didnt give a loan to Afghanistan but Aid. With billions of $s and huge oil resources your "brother" is indeed very stingy or just doesn't give a damn about Pakistan.2nd thing is,if US aid is so controversial then why didn't you reject it?

"Again, you don't know the facts. The facts are that majority of the people in Pakistan distrust US motives and US aid, based on all of the polls. In fact US is seen by Pakistanis with much greater suspicion that India."--> Riaz, I do know the facts. KLB is not a new phenomenon and it wasn't drawn up in a day. Its full contents were available on the net and anyone,even people from your Urdu Press and YOU could have accessed it.It all started after your ISPR(or whatever) gave a press conference expressing doubts about the Bill.The KL bill which was a non-issue till then was intentionally made into one. Were the Americans being discreet when they were adding the conditions 1 year ago? NO. Was your media stopped from accessing the content of the bill? NO. Why then,suddenly,it all started after that press conference? You military designed it to be that way. They were miffed that they were being sidelined and the conditions included imposing Civilian supremacy and it also required Civilians to decide about important Posts in Pakistan. Read this when I mean by important positions. http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/columnists/why-not-a-civilian-head-of-isi-719I am not talking about this one position of power but many more. If you thought KLB was insulting then why didnt you write about it before this whole controversy started? Your military is planting news to achieve its strategic objectives as pointed by Mr.Kamran Shafi in the link above.I also ask,who the hell is ISPR to express doubts about something in the Civilian arena,like this bill? In India the General would have been kicked out for this gesture. That is how a Civilian supremacy works,believe it or not.

"Ayesha Siddiqa is part of the anti-military, self-styled liberal gang in Pakistan that wants to destroy the only working institution left in the country that is capable to maintaining its unity. Without this institution, who would fight the simultaneous threats from East and West?"---> This is the only institution that can hold your country together is not a good thing. Considering,your military has ruled your country for more than half its life this is a given and inevitable. As a result your military ensured that no civilian institution is more powerful than itself. It never let Institutions grow. This is downright scary. Earlier,last year(I think) when Asif Ali Zardari Govt asked ISI to report to it and made preparations for it,your pro-civilian supremacy military went ballistic! The govt had to withdraw with embarrassment. This is how power hungry your military is. It will NEVER relinquish control-atleast full control to the Civvies. I hope you can recollect that particular episode. I hope you have written about it.

"She has no credibility with the people. Right now, the Army is far more popular than any politician, institution or commentator in Pakistan because they are fighting and dying for Pakistan as we speak."---> The Army is popular. That should be scaring you but you celebrate it considering all the ills of Pakistan are because of that 1 single institution. They are indeed fighting and dying but they are doing because the policies they have drawn up in the past have failed miserably,even backfired!Only if Pakistan army had not insisted in supporting the Taliban in Aghanistan,or,even before that the Army under Zia ul-haq had not supported the mujahideens to fight the soviets the same mujahideens wouldn't be running around Pakistan now blowing themselves up!Only, if you army had not supported militancy and militant outfits in Kashmri,Lashkar-e-Jhangvi would not have turned against the Pakistani state. Even,Jaish is credited to providing Suicide bombers to TTP!!! Didnt they fight in Kashmir too?These are mind-boggling failures of that very institution which is popular right now. If I cared about Pakistan then I would be bothered.. Like Kamran Shafi..

anoop: "Only if Pakistan army had not insisted in supporting the Taliban in Aghanistan,or,even before that the Army under Zia ul-haq had not supported the mujahideens to fight the soviets the same mujahideens wouldn't be running around Pakistan now blowing themselves up!Only, if you army had not supported militancy and militant outfits in Kashmri,Lashkar-e-Jhangvi would..."

We can all engage in woulda, coulda, shoulda hypotheticals. I can argue that things would have been much better if the partition hadn't happened in the first place. Or Nehru and India actually followed through on their commitment to the Kashmiris and the world to hold a plebiscite. Or the Soviets had never invaded Afghanistan and the US hadn't armed and trained the Islamic radicals, etc. etc.

But we can not turn the clock back. We have to deal with reality as it exists and try and make things better. Both India and Pakistan need to talk seriously and resolve the issues between them and focus on the common threats we face in South Asia.

Here is an excerpt from an interesting NPR radio report about Indians' obsession with Pakistan:

Many analysts believe India's biggest foreign policy challenge these days is its rivalry with China.

But changing attitudes about Pakistan isn't going to be easy. The subject dominates India's news media, which often makes no attempt to disguise its bias. A recent television newscast used the phrase "most preposterous" to describe a position espoused by Pakistan's interior minister.

She says the relationship between India and Pakistan is a paradox. "At the individual level, it turns into a whole level of camaraderie. And at the political level, it is akin to hate," Mustafa says.

Indians who take a hard-line stance on Pakistan sometimes display a strangely contradictory view of that country, Mustafa says.

"People who have been sort of going hammer and tongs about nuking Pakistan — of taking your army across and finishing that country — are people I have seen visit Islamabad and be even friendlier with the Pakistanis. And the families all start visiting each other, big gifts are taken. Then after that, they come back and say the same thing," Mustafa says.

"We can all engage in woulda, coulda, shoulda hypotheticals. I can argue that things would have been much better if the partition hadn't happened in the first place. Or Nehru and India actually followed through on their commitment to the Kashmiris and the world to hold a plebiscite. Or the Soviets had never invaded Afghanistan and the US hadn't armed and trained the Islamic radicals, etc. etc."

---> Riaz, you are mixing up policy deicisions in politics and terrorism. You dont support terrorists. Period. The Partition, Kashmir were all policy decisions. The situation in Kashmir is quite well actually. The Kashmiris are getting better education than they would ever if they were in Pakistan. I recently met a Kashmiri who is driving a cab in Bangalore. He has taken up the opportunity India has provided with its growth. Increasingly Kashmiris are travelling,moving and working in all major cities of India. They are increasingly getting assimilated into the Indian way of life. To prove this in the recent parliamentary elections in Kashmir a Hurriat leader lost by a HUGE margin to NC and PDP. He didnt come in 3rd place! This says a lot about Kashmir than the hurriat people who have never ever fought elections and the only proof of their support is their "claim" to have mass support.India like Pakistan supported a terror group LTTE in Sri Lanka. But, came to its senses and stopped support. We paid the price by losing one of our Ex-Prime Ministers. This is a hard lesson learnt and we learnt it quickly!But, Pakistan has been supporting the Taliban since the Soviets left when there was no need to support them! As I said before,you dont support anti-democratic forces next to where you live! Now,like India ,Pakistan is paying the price. Yet to be seen if they have learnt any lessons from this episode!Partition was a thought out process. And,cannot be compared to idiotic decisions to support Militancy in the neighbourhood. I hope I dont need you to remind you again about Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.Also, US outsourced the job to train the militants to Pakistan. They just provided material support and military aid to Pakistan. So,Pakistan was foolish enough to go along with that. Blaming US is not right here. If you had said no they would not have been able to wage that war in Afghanistan.

"But we can not turn the clock back. We have to deal with reality as it exists and try and make things better. Both India and Pakistan need to talk seriously and resolve the issues between them and focus on the common threats we face in South Asia."

--> Cant agree more. But, the final decision on Kashmir will be and has to be on India's terms. The blue-print with Musharaf that we had agreed upon can only be the solution or LOC should be made a permanent border. By India's terms I also mean to include Kahmiris. They would rather live in a state where democracy is alive and kicking and the constitution guarantees equality than a near-theocratic state like Pakistan,which apparently is fighting a battle for its survival!

A video featured on the New York Times has caused a furore in Pakistan. It has countries top musicians and brand ambassadors endorsing the fact that America and India are responsible for their country's voes. The video also speaks about the alarming trend in Pakistan where even the country's educated folks like Ali Azmat and ,I daresay, this blog's author- Riaz Haq believing that outside powers have a hand in destabilizing Pakistan. It also speaks about a popular pop star who tried to talk sense through his music and was threatened,spoken against in public by Islamic extremism apologists. This is a worrying trend in a paranoid country which is currently battling its own creation- The Taliban.

anoop: I understand your desire to deny the role of RAW in Pakistan and explain away the heinous role of the Hindutva terror outfits in framing Indian Muslims and blaming the ISI for all of their own misdeeds. But if you seriously want to understand the role of radical Hindus in India, I suggest you read what former Maharashtra Police Chief SM Mushrif has written.

In Hemant Karkare’s net (of investigations, of course) many big and small fishes of VHP, RSS, Bajrang Dal and Sanatan Sanstha (which has been found to be involved in Diwali-eve blasts in Goa) had been trapped. Serving and retired army officers, academics, serving and retired officials of India’s premier intelligence service were ensnared in Karkare’s fishing net. The menacing power of the latter groups, inspired by sustained anti-Muslim hate campaigns of the last six decades, gave the plot a sinister and highly destructive character.

Among the plans unearthed by Karkare was a blueprint for the assassination of 70 prominent Indians who could by a hindrance to the project of Hindutva. Interestingly, most of the persons marked for elimination would, naturally, be Hindus because it is they who primarily run the dispensation. The conspirators were also unhappy with organizations whose Hindutva they suspected to be less virulent than desired.

Mushrif believes that the Indian IB is up to its neck in conspiring with the Hindutva groups against Muslims and creating trouble between India and Pakistan by blaming everything on Pakistan, and now one of the former IB leaders KC Verma is heading RAW as of early this year.

The power establishment that really runs the affairs of this country (Mushrif says it is not Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh or Rahul Gandhi) does not want to expose the Hindutva terrorists.

Here is an excerpt from a Rediff report claiming Christine Fair, who I have quoted in this and other posts, has been offered the post of assistant sec of state for South Asia:

Fair told rediff.com that she would most likely decline the offer because she doesn't want to give up her academic research.

The administration, on the other hand, had not given up on her even though she informed Robert Blake, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, who had interviewed her and had subsequently offered her the job, that she would not be interested.

"I am a mixed bag for Indians," she said. "I am not an advocate for any country. I am an advocate for my country."

In an online discussion earlier this year -- convened by the much-respected journal Foreign Affairs -- Fair had said that Pakistan had legitimate concerns about India's involvement in Afghanistan and that perhaps Islamabad's paranoia that New Delhi was fanning unrest in Balochistan was not unfounded.

'I think it is unfair to dismiss the notion that Pakistan's apprehensions about Afghanistan stem in part from its security competition with India,' she had then said, and noted, "Having visited the Indian mission in Zahedan, Iran, I can assure you they are not issuing visas as the main activity. Moreover, India has run operations from its mission in Mazar and is likely doing so from the other consulates it has reopened in Jalalabad and Kandahar along the (Pak-Afghan) border.'

Fair also went on to claim, 'Indian officials have told me privately that they are pumping money into Balochistan. Kabul has encouraged India to engage in provocative activities such as using the Border Roads Organisation to build sensitive parts of the Rind Road and use the Indo-Tibetan police force for security.'

'India is also building schools on a sensitive part of the border in Kunar, across from Bajaur,' she said, alleging, 'Kabul's motivations for encouraging these activities are as obvious as India's interest in engaging in them.'

Fair contended that it would be 'a mistake to completely disregard Pakistan's regional perceptions due to doubts about Indian competence in executing covert operations.'

When reminded about the controversy her allegations on the Foreign Affairs discussion provoked, Fair still held to the credibility of her contention.

"I believe it to be true," she said, adding: "The problems with the Pakistanis is that they lie too much and so, that when they tell the truth, no one believes them."

She argued that "Actually, I am not normative about it -- India should be doing this and they should be doing more of it, if I may be so blunt. So, I've never said, 'Shame on the Indians.'"

But Fair asserted that "nothing that India could possibly do, without being observed as they tend to have not been observed, could ever rival what the Pakistanis have done, and it doesn't justify blowing up consulates and embassies and killing people."

"I stand by what I wrote..." Fair said, "Yes, I think the Indians are up to stuff in Balochistan, as they should be. (But) It's not what the Pakistanis say they are up to."

"Anyone who read what I wrote," she added, "would have seen exactly what I said. Yes, I said, the Pakistanis are exaggerating it, but they are not completely making it up either."

"Let me also be blunt with you," she said. "I think the Indo-US relationship is extremely important, but I know I am not the flavour of the day in India, and I think that it actually would have undermined our moving the relationship forward, if I were in that job. And, that's the reality of it."

Fair said she had told the State Department this "from the beginning, when they interviewed me. I said, 'Are you sure, you are interviewing the right person?'"

anoop: I know Christine Fair has been sucking up to the Indians ever since she told the truth she knows that upset India. But she has not retracted what she originally said about India's clandestine involvement in destabilizing Pakistan.

Most sane officials in the Obama administration and independent analysts and journalists know that Afghanistan is going top be impossible to resolve for them to find an exit until India-Pakistan rivalries are addressed. And the root cause of these rivalries is Kashmir. Hence the Obama pressure on Indians to work on resolving Kashmir.

Riaz,"I know Christine Fair has been sucking up to the Indians ever since she told the truth she knows that upset India."

--> So if she says something in the heat of the moment once and that seems close to your argument, she is telling the truth. If she keeps repeating the thing that you hate the most to hear ,about Pakistan supporting terror, now she is lying and sucking up to us?Mind you,Riaz, this is not an Indian outlook website. This is WSJ one of the most prestigious papers in the world and she is writing a Op-Ed in that. This is something she must have planned carefully before she pens it down. Not a debate like where she says supposedly says India is behaving badly in Afghanistan. She said that in the heat of the moment to make her argument. Even the part about India's mischief in Afghanistan cannot be conclusively extracted in even if we accept her previous argument to be correct.There are now 2 possibilities here. She is either correct or wrong. You cant have it both ways.

"Most sane officials in the Obama administration and independent analysts and journalists know that Afghanistan is going top be impossible to resolve for them to find an exit until India-Pakistan rivalries are addressed."

--> So from now are you and your Urdu press is going to decide who is sane and who is not.! Great!If someone agrees with you they are sane,if someone does not they are insane?Afghanistan and Kashmir are linked up but not the way like them to be. Pakistan wanted its proxies in Afghanistan because they wanted to concentrate in Kashmir using the very proxies they were supporting in Afghanistan. In fact, you cant find many Kashmiris(Local kashmiris,i.e, from J&K) taking part in the militancy. Besides, as far as we(that includes Kashmiris) are concerned Kashmir is already resolved. The question is if the LOC can be converted to a Soft Border or a Hard Border. When the negotiations start I bet our negotiators are going to say this very thing.Changing borders is out of the question now. Its not allowed in our constitution which I consider more sacred than Koran or Bhagvat Gita or Bible. Also, what kind of (practical)settlement are you really looking for here,Riaz? Forget Kashmir, there are bigger problems in Pakistan right now and blaming India for Balochistan(a problem which started 60 years ago,mind you) or FATA or wherever is not going to solve them. You are actually committing a disservice to your country as you are not correctly diagnosing the disease and hence, you are allowing the disease to grow. Face the facts which are right in front of you. Respect and trust your army but verify whatever they tell you. After all it was the military institution which was solely responsible for the debacle of East Pakistan! These so-called evidences can easily be planted by your army and India CANNOT work under the nose of the CIA in Afghanistan without their knowledge!

Here's an interesting opinion by Irfan Hussain who is often praised and cited by Indians when he harshly criticizes Pakistan:

A year later (after Mumbai), perhaps we can look back on the attack with a greater degree of objectivity, and count the winners and the losers.

The real winners, of course, are militant groups, like the Lashkar-i-Taiba, and their shadowy backers in Pakistan. They have achieved what they set out to do: sabotage the peace talks between India and Pakistan. Although these negotiations had not achieved a breakthrough, they had greatly improved relations between India and Pakistan.

The second prize goes to the security establishments in both countries, although this is truer of Pakistan than it is of India where the military is firmly under civilian control. The reality is that soldiers and spies need enemies to justify their lavish budgets. Peace between traditional enemies means cuts in defence, and less toys for the boys.

Obviously, the biggest losers are the victims of the attack, and their friends and families. But the other big losers are the people of the subcontinent. Millions in the region will continue suffering, just because their leaders remain locked in a 60-year old conflict. And when there was a glimmer of hope of some kind of resolution, relations have plunged to a new low.

The militants’ victory is not restricted to poisoning bilateral relations between India and Pakistan: by hitting Mumbai, it has ensured that there will be no cooperation between the two countries in the war against extremism in the foreseeable future.

This is no small victory. The war being waged on the Pak-Afghan border is perhaps the most decisive conflict of our times, and its outcome will affect the region for years to come. In order to combat the Taliban and their various partners effectively, active cooperation between India and Pakistan is crucial.

After the Mumbai attack, India has refused to pursue peace talks, arguing that as long as Pakistan tolerates the presence of terrorist organisations on its soil, there can be no meaningful negotiations. Again and again, the Indian leadership and media have echoed the mantra of Pakistan ‘not doing enough’ against the planners of the Mumbai attack.

In several articles, I have argued that it is precisely because of the atrocity that peace talks need to be pursued with greater focus and political will. Does India really want to hand a major victory to the perpetrators of the attack?

I have also suggested that in order to reassure the Pakistani military that it has nothing to fear on its eastern border, India could easily withdraw one of its divisions deployed there. This would encourage Pakistan to transfer more troops to its northwest where the real battle against extremists is now going on.

They miss the point that one negotiates with one’s adversaries, not one’s friends. And they have the bizarre notion that peace is a reward for good behaviour, not a mutual need. The fact is that India needs peace just as much as Pakistan does. True, it is Pakistan that is currently being battered by an unrelenting wave of terrorism. But a Pakistan destabilised by extremist violence should be New Delhi’s worst nightmare.

Those who think a victorious Taliban would stop their mayhem on Pakistan’s eastern border are living in cloud-cuckoo land. These thugs have no respect for international boundaries, and have repeatedly declared their intention to ‘liberate’ Kashmir. Many of them also want to re-establish Muslim rule over India. These insane goals will ensure that terrorist groups will go on trying to hit Indian targets.

Irfan Hussain is right that India has to respond positively. We have been doing that all along ignoring the terrorist camps in Pakistan controlled territories and terror attacks in India from time to time by terrorists based in Pakistan and traditionally supported by the ISI.Now,there is no difference between a Taliban or LeT or Jaish for India. There is no need for extra panic if Taliban activity increases in the areas bordering India because operationally they are not much different to LeT or Jaish. Its like choosing between 2 evils. However,radicalization of Pakistan is a worry but we cannot control that,can we. We can however seal our borders and patrol our seas like USA does with Mexico. Mexico like Pakistan is a place where armed groups roam free and there is a massive drug market there. In Pakistan, it is Islamic Radicalization. We can improve our security on borders and just ignore Pakistan. Our only worry is the nuke's safety. But, that is providing Military is weakened to such an extent that nuke's security is compromised. I dont that Military of pakistan can be weakened to such an extent that we have to worry about that. That is the only positive thing in Pakistan's war on terror right now. So, its not yet India's war for survival. I am not suggesting India should support anti-Pakistan groups. It doesn't need to as they are wreaking havoc themselves without any help of any kind. It is imperative that India upgrades its security and SOON!

An article by Nadeem Paracha where he briefs the rise of Islamist parties in Pakistan. But, there is one point I want to emphasize where he thinks the all-powerful army is bringing in the India-factor to motivate its soldiers and gain the support of the people alike. Now, result is as Nadeem Paracha puts it,"So is it true that the same old India (and ‘Zionists’) bogy is being built into the emerging narrative as well to infuse the right amount of motivation into the troops and the nation in the fight against extremism which in reality is very much an internal demon? Perhaps. But more alarming however is, that if state follies in this respect ended up creating big monsters in the shape of extremist organisations, then the new added-on narrative being peddled so enthusiastically by colourful chameleons on popular TV is bound to generate a generation of young Pakistanis which – ironically in the ‘age of information’ – may be the most conditioned and reactionary culmination of young people to grace the social landscape of the country, passionately divorced from any reality that may compromise this generation’s new-found mirage and misconceptions about the ‘ideology of Pakistan’ and Islam."

As we can see even the section of well-educated people like Riaz Haq,the author of this blog, and many others are actually beginning to getting divorced from reality and are beginning to think that the military claims of an Indian hand in the recent terror blasts in the country and the claim that India is actually responsible for the emergence of Taliban(TTP) and is supporting it through it many "consulates" in Afghanistan.A whole generation of Pakistanis are growing up believing the conspiracy theories and utter propaganda by the all-powerful military of Pakistan and nobody seems to question the fact that why would India provide support to a group which has claimed to take the fight into India after Pakistan.

anoop: Paracha seems more interested in being a contrarian by living up to his "liberal" credentials than in exploring the reality of the toxic India-Pakistan rivalry that makes both sides--particularly the intelligence and security establishments-- to act irrationally to the detriment of their long term national interest in peace and stability of the region.

Riaz,You cant argue against anything that author has claimed. Almost all the ills that plague Pakistan right now is because of the Islamist Parties and they were always supported by the Military. No country in this world can harm Pakistan as much its own institution- its army has harmed them. All the claims of evidences against India is just an act and instances of placing the evidences to suit the needs of the military. Not hard for an organization like ISI to place these so-called evidences to divert all the blame to India. Hey why take the blame when you can easily convince the people that somebody else is responsible for it?Face it,Riaz, its an act of desperation of your army.

Riaz, you are not arguing against Mr.Paracha's as written and you are just calling him names and accusing him to be wrong. That is not right. I am saying dont look at the writer,look at the content. Is there anything disputable which he has written? Is there any error in his judgement? I certainly think not!

Anoop: Paracha is not entirely wrong but his conclusions are. He is very predicable in how he sees the world, regardless of the facts. He looks at everything and interprets it to reinforce his pre-determined beliefs and ideology.

Riaz,What is so wrong in his conclusions. The military has lied to your nation many times before and it is easy for them to do again. After all they are not accountable to anyone! They also hate democratic dispensations for the fact that they might prove to be too powerful in future. This is all recorded in History. What is so wrong in his conclusions? This is what any neutral observer will conclude,dont you think? The military in Pakistan is too powerful for Pakistan's own good and they have always supported Islamist groups to achieve their own end. Now, they are making India ,the traditional villian, again a villian by saying,"we are not responsible here. The blood-thirsty Indians are! We only support the good-Taliban. Indians support the bad-Taliban(who are by the way misguided youths who are brianwashed by the Indians)"Cant believe you and the intelligentsia dont question the Military about supposed India-hand and blindly trust it. After all this is the institution responsible for the biggest loss to Pakistan- its eastern wing.

Here is another piece by internationally accalimed author and Jounalist Ahmed Rahid. Here, he says the military is increasing its influence in politics and indicates its intrusiveness into civilian matters. He also claims that Pakistani army is the real decision maker with regarding to Indian and Afghanistan policies. No surprise that most people dont believe the canard that India is supporting the terrorists as claimed by the Army.

anoop: This misguided attack by you and Paracha on Pakistani military is actually an assault on Pakistan's unity and stability at this crucial time in its history.

Nations require strong institutions to survive as an entity and t maintain peace and order. In the absence of competent and honest political leadership in Pakistan, the military, with all all its flaws, is the institution that is maintaining Pakistan's unity and integrity.

In the absence of a strong military and functioning bureaucracy, Pakistan would descend into chaos just as Somalia and Afghanistan have, and that would be a much bigger problem for Pakistanis, Indians and the rest of the region and the world.

Without Pakistan's strong military and functioning bureaucracy, it would be a failed state that many would like it to be.

Riaz,"This misguided attack by you and Paracha on Pakistani military is actually an assault on Pakistan's unity and stability at this crucial time in its history."

The military is the reason for all this bloodshed. If they had not foolishly played the USA's war in Afghanistan against the Soviets these Mujahideens would have not been created. Lets say, Pakistan did indeed did a good thing by acting as a front line state for that war. But, that came at a price- Democracy. Even after the Soviet Union collapsed after 1990 there was no need to support these mujahideens during the 90's. Ok lets say Pakistan had no idea 9/11 would happen so it continued its support. But, why did Musharaff allow the Top Taliban leadership to sneak into Pakistan? Wasn't that running with the hare,hunting with the hounds? Look at what that has brought into Pakistan- Radicalization at an unprecedented scale and thus, the creation of the TTP. These are the actions related to the emergence of TTP.Now,lets look at how your military goofed up by supporting Kashmir militants. After the defeat of Russia at the hands of the Mujahideen supported by USA, your army had a brain storm- "lets snatch Kashmir from India". But, there was one difference- India had the popular support of the Kashmiris. Armies can never beat an enemy in a guirella warfare if it doesn't have the support of the local population. Example: Vietnam, Afghanistan(both the wars),East Pakistan,etc. Now, those very militants-like Lashkar-E-Jhangvi are supplying suicide bombers to TTP. Isn't that a twist of irony! It even turns out Jaish is also getting into the action. Lets look at how your military was responsible for breaking up of the country it was supposed to protect! Army went berserk and killed thousands and raped hundreds of women in Bangladesh when the Bangladeshis demanded their rights to have a PM from East Pakistan. Your military went on a rampage and the independence struggle started.These are all colossal mistakes of your army. Armies fight. Thats what they train for. Let the decision making be with the Civilians,like in India.You say Military is the only stable institution in Pakistan. Why is that the case? Isn't your military solely responsible for denying the Civilian leadership power and thus,destroying state institutions? You have to grow the institutions and cannot be established in a day. Your military never let it happen! Now,Zardari has unlimited power as President since, your military leader didnt want to give up his share of power back when he was president. Kayani looks to support democracy. But, what about the next guy waiting in the wings to be Chief of Army Staff? Will he be good like Kayani? You can never no! Zia Ul Haq brought radicalization into Pakistan and is primarily responsible for its ills related to terrorism. Who knows another Zia ul Haq is just waiting for his turn to rule the country. Armed forces should be under the Civlian govt. No matter how corrupt it is or how inefficient it is. This is the 1st step. You cannot push these things into the future. Atleast, you cannot afford to after 62 years.

Keep it up! this discussion though ,off the track on many occasions ,has proved to be quite informative and surprisingly sober.(considering most online indo-pak discussions turn into cheap street fights ).Sad at whats happening at Pakistan.My sincere condolences.I hope there is an utright aversion for all forms of extremism in Pak policy. And for indians here, no Schadenfreude on Pak ills please.Becoz a nuclear Taliban is Indias worst nightmare.

Mr Haq I follow your postings off and on.They are pretty educative and always give an good alternate perspective.Please keep it up. Now I suppose,as a pakistani you feel, that Army should take over right now.Right?Any predictions for the next 6 months about Pakistani offensive and the general situation in the region?

aamsvad: "Now I suppose,as a pakistani you feel, that Army should take over right now.Right?Any predictions for the next 6 months about Pakistani offensive and the general situation in the region?"

Contrary to popular belief in India and the West, but particularly in India, Pakistani military is not oblivious to the public mood in Pakistan. Historically, the army has intervened when people are thoroughly disgusted with ALL of the politicians and their corrupt and incompetent governance. And each intervention has been welcomed by a significant population in the decades of 60s, 80s and 00s.

I don't think that point has reached yet. It'll probably be several years before the people throw in the towel and acquiesce to military rule.

The army is also heavily preoccupied at the moment fighting a powerful insurgency. And the Army is quite popular in its campaign against the Taliban. I expect the army to be doing that for at least the foreseeable future to restore some of the credibility it lost during the waning years of Musharraf rule.

I do not think the military will take over politics again until after the attention on Pakistan of the Americans decrease. That will happen only after Afghanistan cools down or atleast US troops move out. I dont think they will move out but they will certainly thin down the presence. But, as and when the US attention on Pak decreases,the military will get its green signal to go ahead and take over. But, it wont till there is widespread hatred among the Pakistani public against the democratic rulers. We all know the opinion of Pakistanis swing from on pole to the other rather too frequently!Military in Pakistan is destined to rule the country forever,it would seem and I cant think of a possible scenario where that would change. Unless, a leader of Nehru's caliber is born in Pakistan. But, seeing the present situation,even if a Nehru-like person is born he will probably not rise politically and multiple power centers in Pakistan will make sure of that. Pakistani military had a golden chance of transferring the power and change the way Pakistan functions for good after the elections of 2007. It messed up the opportunity as always. Kayani seems interested to maintain the status quo and not take over but the next guy might turn out like Zia. You never know.

anoop: "Military in Pakistan is destined to rule the country forever,it would seem and I cant think of a possible scenario where that would change. Unless, a leader of Nehru's caliber is born in Pakistan. But, seeing the present situation,even if a Nehru-like person is born he will probably not rise politically and multiple power centers in Pakistan will make sure of that."

I am much more optimistic than that.

What Pakistan needs is a sizable middle class powerful enough to seize control of Pak politics from the feudals,and bring true democratic governance.

Pakistan is already the most urbanized nation in South Asia, and it is rapidly building a sizable urban middle class that will assert itself over the feudals and the military in the next decade.

"Pakistan is already the most urbanized nation in South Asia, and it is rapidly building a sizable urban middle class that will assert itself over the feudals and the military in the next decade. "

Yes. That is true. It has a large number of population in the Urban areas. That is cause for worry not celebration in the case of Pakistan. According to British council report Pakistan needs to generate 1 Million jobs per year just to satisfy the current population. Population is growing to 300 million by 2050! For a country of Pakistan's size that is just too much. Knowing Pakistan that Population is only going to increase as Mullahs will go crazy against any family planning programs in Pakistan.Who is going to invest in Pakistan in the next 10 years knowing all that is going on in Pakistan? How on earth will Pakistan create jobs if it gives the task of building damns and ports to Chinese,when logic dictates that if the local population is involved its more profitable to the country?Who is controlling the economic policies of Pakistan?Dont say the Civilian administration is incharge if it cant even control how much percentage of resources go to the Military. A country of the size of Pakistan is going to be 3rd largest or the 4th largest country in terms of Population. That is a huge cause of worry for any normal country but it would be a bigger cause of worry if that county is going through a Civil war and its economy is in the doldrums. Is there anybody to listen in Pakistan? Military is pre-occupied with this war against its home grown terrorists; Civilian leadership is pre-occupied with the opposition and military on its back and is fighting even to complete its term. I feel so good that atleast in India when there is something we can ask question to the govt incharge. They are accountable to us the only permanent institution that should matter.

anoop: "It has a large number of population in the Urban areas. That is cause for worry not celebration in the case of Pakistan. According to British council report Pakistan needs to generate 1 Million jobs per year just to satisfy the current population."

Urbanization is not just a side effect of economic growth; it is an integral part of the process, according to the World Bank. With the robust economic growth averaging 7 percent and availability of millions of new jobs created between 2000 and 2008, there has been increased rural to urban migration in Pakistan to fill the jobs in growing manufacturing and service sectors. I am hopeful the current economic slowdown is temporary,and normal growth of 6-7%, producing about 1.5 million jobs a year will return soon.

There are many benefits of rural to urban migration for migrant's lives, including reduction in abject poverty, empowerment of women, increased access to healthcare and education and other services. At the same time, there are many issues caused by the current wave of urbanization, including the fact that massive increases in urban population create more and larger urban slums, and bring tremendous pressures on city services already strained beyond limits. Take sanitation, for example, and it is no surprise that three major South Asian cities, Dhaka, Mumbai and New Delhi, show up on the Mercer's list of world's 25 dirtiest cities.

anoop: "Population is growing to 300 million by 2050! For a country of Pakistan's size that is just too much. Knowing Pakistan that Population is only going to increase as Mullahs will go crazy against any family planning programs in Pakistan."

Pakistan's population growth rate has been declining with increased urbanization. It has already come down to 1.8% in 2008, down from 2.17% in 2000. Based on PAI Research Commentary by Karen Hardee and Elizabeth Leahy, the total fertility rate (TFR) in Pakistan is still the highest in South Asia at 4.1 children per woman. Women in urban areas have an average of 3.3 children compared to their rural counterparts, who have an average of 4.5 children. The overall fertility rate has been cut in half from about 8 children per woman in 1960s to about 4 this decade, according to a study published in 2009.

Pakistan's population density of 540 per sq km. There are 57 countries with higher pop densities than Pakistan, including India at #32 with 925 per sq km, about twice as much as Pakistan's.

"Urbanization is not just a side effect of economic growth; it is an integral part of the process, according to the World Bank. With the robust economic growth averaging 7 percent and availability of millions of new jobs created between 2000 and 2008, there has been increased rural to urban migration in Pakistan to fill the jobs in growing manufacturing and service sectors. I am hopeful the current economic slowdown is temporary,and normal growth of 6-7%, producing about 1.5 million jobs a year will return soon."

The economic slowdown in Pakistan is huge considering that its very own neighbors have registered 7.9 % growth. How much has Pakistan's economy grown this past year? 2%. A difference of 5% with 2 South Asian countries. When the world is coming out of recession Pakistan is crawling to register 3 % growth. The growth during years when Mushy was around was artificial as US injected Billions into Pakistan. Officially $10 Billion but unofficial estimates put it at $17 Billion. The resources freed up with that kind of money bloated up the GDP growth figures. Since, the situation in Pakistan is worsening by the day you can expect money to fly out of Pakistan at an accelerated pace. I dont think this Civil war in Pakistan is going to end anytime soon. God alone knows when Afghanistan will be resolved and the image of Pakistan will be in ruins as long as Afghanistan burns. Plus, the bombings that are taking place in Pakistan is going to further raise fears of instability in Pakistan. And, who can forget the infamous Political instability of Pakistan. Result: Impression that Pakistan is not suited for investment. You need investment to fuel growth and a stable govt. Pakistan has none and it would be immature to expect things to get better in near future.

Thanks Riaz for answering the question about Pak Army.I hope the take over by Army never comes, which will definitely mean that Pak situation has improved for the better.Coming back to main topic of discussion,If at all RAW is aiding Taliban its a really deadly and inimical move for longterm Indian designs.Why?Because playing with Religion/sectarianism is like playing with fire or feeding a fanged cobra pet.It will bite u for sure.Just look at history ...Indira played with Sikhs,she paid with her life.Rajiv played with Tamil sectarianism, and he lost his life.Pakistan entertained Jehadis under various capacities and the result is for all to be seen .

That does not mean India should avoid counter-intelligence etc.Among many things to do, she should take a leaf out of China:no wars for justice ,no war on terrors,no aiding militia,no claims of being the champion of democracy(US/UK),or champions of peace (like India before 1992)etc... still THE BEST ,MOST EFFECTIVE AND PRACTICAL diplomacy in the world.in a nutshell Indian diplomacy should not, at any cost play with religion, let alone religious madmen.

aamsvad: "in a nutshell Indian diplomacy should not, at any cost play with religion, let alone religious madmen."

I absolutely agree. But the reality is that Hindutva outfits have infiltrated India's bureaucracy, intelligence and security apparatus, as laid out by SM Mushrif, former Maharashtra police chief, in his recently published book "Who Killed Karkare?"

In Hemant Karkare’s net (of investigations, of course) many big and small fishes of VHP, RSS, Bajrang Dal and Sanatan Sanstha (which has been found to be involved in Diwali-eve blasts in Goa recently) had been trapped. Serving and retired army officers, academics, serving and retired officials of India’s premier intelligence service were ensnared in Karkare’s fishing net. The menacing power of the latter groups, inspired by sustained anti-Muslim hate campaigns of the last six decades, gave the plot a sinister and highly destructive character.

Among the plans unearthed by Karkare was a blueprint for the assassination of 70 prominent Indians who could by a hindrance to the project of Hindutva. Interestingly, most of the persons marked for elimination would, naturally, be Hindus because it is they who primarily run the dispensation. The conspirators were also unhappy with organizations whose Hindutva they suspected to be less virulent than desired.

Mushrif, who very well knows the power of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) to make or mar lives and careers, says he is prepared to face the consequences of hostility of this power hub. He musters “evidence” to show that the IB has regularly been interfering with regular police investigations to let Hindutva terrorists slip out of the net and replace them with random Muslim youth. To fudge the issues further obliging police officers in the states would not mind exterminating a few Muslim youth to be branded posthumously as “terrorists”.

There are quite a few number of such cases where such extra-judicial killing of Muslim youth has turned out to be false police encounters. All this is done to cover tracks of Hindutva terror. Mushrif says a “Brahminist” network that has its origins in Maharashtra, and is closely knit across political parties, government services, including IB, and other vital sectors of life is behind the terror that seeks to destroy the secular, democratic state. He hastens to clarify that very few Brahminists are Brahmins. Many are from other high Hindu castes, some from middle and lower castes.

Yes there are many brazingly unanswered Q about Mumbai.Esp the naked lack of responsibility and lack of security even to the police top brass.Do you think that Mumbai massacre not the job of terrorists from Pakistan?

aamsvd, "Do you think that Mumbai massacre not the job of terrorists from Pakistan?"

I think at least some of the Mumbai perpetrators were from Pakistan, based on all the reports I have seen so far. But I expect more shoes to fall.

I don't think we know the whole story of the entire tragic episode yet. The new allegations are still surfacing, such as the charges against Headley, and the questions being raised by SM Mushrif and Karkare's wife.

After every bomb-blast in India there is this all powerful-sinister "ISI hand" which was apparent within seconds of "bomb blasts". The “ISI hand”-logic held water for the first time, second time, third time or utmost for the fourth time. But after that this "ISI hand" made our government looks stupid and irresponsible. Indian Govt never came out with strong proof or explanation. Only during Mumbai did it come with solid proof. But the most important point is , even if its an "ISI hand or leg “, it is the duty of the Govt to make sure no deadly incidents happen and citizens are protected. And the Indian Govt failed miserably.The bitter truth of South Asia is we have the same problems everywhere. So the Indian situation holds true for Pak. Without concrete proof and solid-evidence of "RAWliban", Pak govt and intelligence looks stupid and irresponsible. And if at all there is concrete evidence then the perpetrators need to be dealt in the harshest terms. Weather Indian or Pakistani. But The main issue is blasts should not just happen in the first place. We as citizens,one need to get complete protection no matter what/who is behind the blasts.

aamsvad: "Only during Mumbai did it come with solid proof. But the most important point is , even if its an "ISI hand or leg “, it is the duty of the Govt to make sure no deadly incidents happen and citizens are protected. And the Indian Govt failed miserably."

I don't agree that the Indian govt has solid proof other than the admission of the lone surviving attacker in Mumbai. There is no proof that links the attack to the ISI.

But I do agree that the govts are responsible to protect their citizens, regardless of the source of the attacks. And I think Pakistan govt is currently failing miserably in carrying out this utmost duty.

"I don't agree that the Indian govt has solid proof other than the admission of the lone surviving attacker in Mumbai. There is no proof that links the attack to the ISI."

---> I agree that there isn't an ounce of evidence against ISI in Mumbai attacks. But, we all know who created LeT,dont we. We all know that a bunch of uneducated brutes from Pakistan's villages came to Mumbai using sophiticated GPS devices and had VOIP accounts to talk to the handlers. They were trained by professionals and were equipped by them. ISI hasn't even broken its support to the Afghan Taliban when the worlds only superpower is breathing down its neck. Its has no incentives to break the bonds with another of its creations- LeT. Why should they? LeT kills Indians,ISI's enemies. It doesn't matter if groups like LeT are responsible for Radicalizing the youth of Pakistan in greater numbers than the number of Indians it kills. Who has LeT hurt the most. Is it the Indians or Pakistanis? And,lets not forget LeT's founder roaming free in Pakistan,giving speeches,radicalizing the youth unstopped. He probably has more following than the country's president,Zardari. This is a guy designated by none less than the UN security council and also by other countries like the US and India as being a terrorist roaming free and doing what he wants in a country which is in Civil war with itself. A war it is fighting with an ideology that is of the same brand as practiced by LeT, the group which is protected by Pakistan.I see this war ending REALLY soon(Hopefully,Sarcasm was noted).

Bulls eye Anoop! Anyhow when i said "solid evidence" i meant "Pak/Pak elements" involvement in Mumbai,but not specifically ISI.And now they are finding fresh evidences linking Pak-Army to 26/11."I don't agree that the Indian govt has solid proof other than the admission of the lone surviving attacker in Mumbai."What do define as "solid proof" sir?What else do you need to declare that there is "Solid proof"?

aamsvad: "What do define as "solid proof" sir?What else do you need to declare that there is "Solid proof"?"

Admission of guilt is not acceptable as solid evidence on any court of law following the Western style legal systems inherited from the Brits.

In fact, it is not unusual for courts in the US to throw any confessions or tainted testimony extracted from a prisoner under duress or torture and without the presence of a defense attorney. And Kassab has already changed his plea more than once. We all know how common torture is in India.

When the Slumdog director sought police cooperation for the torture scenes, the only condition they attached was that the policeman shown torturing should be someone less than the rank of a police inspector.

Beyond Kassab's guilt as an individual, there has been no evidence of any kind offered linking him to the Pakistani state.

Riaz,"When the Slumdog director sought police cooperation for the torture scenes, the only condition they attached was that the policeman shown torturing should be someone less than the rank of a police inspector."

LOL.. you draw excellent inferences. :P

"Admission of guilt is not acceptable as solid evidence on any court of law following the Western style legal systems inherited from the Brits.

In fact, it is not unusual for courts in the US to throw any confessions or tainted testimony extracted from a prisoner under duress or torture and without the presence of a defense attorney. And Kassab has already changed his plea more than once. We all know how common torture is in India."

---> Riaz, the world's eyes are on this case and I highly doubt Kasab would be tortured when the world's eyes are on him. His lawyer would have shouted on top of his voice if there was torture alleged. The magnanimity of evidence against him is such that there is no need to bring out any evidence or confession. There are many eye witnesses and camera footage.When the Indian govt says evidence it means recordings of the handlers with their proteges. Not just from Indian intelligence agencies but from CIA also. There is absolutely no doubt that the handlers were Pakistani and the plot was hatched by a terror group from Pakistan, a group created by Pakistani intelligence agencies- LeT. That is why LeT and JuD were banned by the UN. UN will do it only if there is overwhelming evidence against that particular group. Hope you dont support the 'charity' organization.

The army and air force are battling it out over how to beat Pakistan in a flash war if and when that happens.

The Indian Air Force is not convinced about its role in the army's "cold start doctrine" for a future Indo-Pak war.

The strategy envisages the air force providing "close air support", which calls for aerial bombing of ground targets to augment the fire power of the advancing troops.

The growing tension between the two services is evident in a statement of air vice-marshal (retd) Kapil Kak, deputy director of the air force's own Centre for Air Power Studies.

"There is no question of the air force fitting itself into a doctrine propounded by the army. That is a concept dead at inception," Kak said.

A senior army officer disputes the notion of a conceptual difference between the two services. "The air force is supposed to launch an offensive under the doctrine by hitting targets deep inside enemy territory," he said. But he admitted the air force was hesitant about 'close air support'. 'Cold Start' is a post-nuclearised doctrine that envisages a "limited war" in which the army intends to inflict substantial damage on Pakistan's armed forces without letting it cross the threshold where it could think of pressing the nuclear button.

The doctrine intends to accomplish the task before the international community led by the US and China could intercede to end hostilities. Kak said, "The air force has the primary task of achieving 'air dominance' by which Pakistan's air force is put out of action allowing the army to act at will."

But he sees little necessity for the air force to divert frontline fighter aircraft for augmenting the army's fire power, a task that, in his opinion, can be achieved by the army's own attack helicopters and multiple rocket launchers that now have a 100-km range.

But he agrees the two services should work according to a joint plan. It means the air force would launch 'battlefield air strikes' to neutralise threats on the ground based on an existing plan. But that would be different from an army commander calling for air support on the basis of a developing war scenario.

That is not the only problem facing the doctrine. In the past few weeks, many have expressed doubts about the army's ability to launch operations on the basis of the new doctrine.

There are also apprehensions about the army's incomplete deployment of forces, lack of mobility and unattended infrastructure development.

But senior officers say the army has identified the units, which would constitute the eight division-strong independent battle groups out of its three strike corps. These battle groups would comprise mechanised infantry, artillery and armour.

"The forces have exercised as constituted battle groups at least six times since 2004. Each of the identified unit knows where they will be deployed," a senior General said.

According to him, the time for deployment has been cut down to "days". "No longer will the movement of troops require three months like it did when Operation Parakram was launched after the attack on Parliament in 2001," he said.

The army also debunks the idea that the troops lack mobility. Some armed forces observers have said only 35 per cent of the army is mobile inside the country.

They have, thus, concluded that even less numbers would be mobile inside the enemy territory.

The army officials, however, pooh pooh the criticism claiming 100 per cent of the Indian troops are mobile.

Here's an interesting report in Pak Observer about ISI Chief's confrontation with CIA chief in Pakistan:

After my four hour long informal interaction with Admiral Mike Mullen, the most powerful man in uniform and Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the multi-barrel gun directed at Afghanistan and Pakistan, at the residence of US Ambassador on the rainy evening of April 6, 2009, I had in my comments mentioned that now the ISI was the immediate target of the US Establishment. This was no “breaking news” at all as every one who keeps an eye on the ongoing war on terror knew well that US was hell-bent on (i) getting the Pakistan Army sucked in the domestic turmoil in Swat, FATA and beyond Waziristan, and (ii) reining in what the US calls “rogue elements” in the ISI.

There are confirmed reports that to achieve its objectives the CIA hired the services of at least a dozen Afghan warlords inside Afghanistan and provided through them arms and finances to militants in FATA and Swat to carry out murders and devastations in the country. It was like a double-edged sword not only to get the Army launch attacks against Taliban on Pakistani side of the border but also to give a message to the ISI that the CIA can use the Pakistani Taliban against their own security forces. It was in this background that after a long, long tolerance the prime intelligence agency of the country ultimately confronted the CIA Director Leon E. Panetta with some highly classified and irrefutable evidence. Panetta was startled when DG, ISI General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, a no-nonsense General, placed the facts before him in Islamabad on November 20, 2009. The “deliberate leaks” after the meeting of the spy chiefs of the two countries, spoke of the mind of the ISI and the armed forces of Pakistan. General Pasha had earlier conveyed the facts about the interference of CIA in acts of terrorism in Pakistan to the Government but on realizing that either the message was not strongly conveyed to the Americans or it had no desired impact on them, finally put his foot down and expressed serious concerns over the CIA's crude interference in the country's internal matters. The proof about instances of covert US support to some hardened militant outfits and terrorist activities they carried out over the past few weeks and months, was presented to Panetta. It was indeed a startling revelation for the top US spy and a bold manoeuvre of Pakistan Army. General Pasha's tactical move baffled Panetta when he was told in categorical terms that Pakistan had incriminating evidence about the CIA officials' involvement in providing assistance to perpetrators of some terrorist activities within Pakistan, which had negative impact on Pakistan's efforts towards war on terror and that the CIA must shun such activities. The clarity with which the information was conveyed sent a loud message to Capitol Hills that if it wanted Pakistan's cooperation in the war on terror, it must give up playing double games. It is a known fact that the Indian intelligence agency RAW is operating in Afghanistan with the active backing of CIA and not only is it involved in acts of terrorism in the NWFP but also in Balochistan. The Indians cannot undertake such wide-scale activities in this region without the tacit approval and backing of the CIA. The question arises how come India has developed a huge presence in Kabul.

Riaz,Pak Observer Newspaper is the same newspaper that claims 9/11 was done by Mossad+RAW or CIA depending on who writes the article/editorial.This newspaper is the English versions of Urdu newspapers. Since, Urdu newspapers dominate in Pakistan, the utter nonsense that comes out of them is believed as the truth by the masses. Hence, the whole nation starts believing absurd conspiracy theories(occasionally,you included).I can search and provide you links of the newspaper EDITORIALS saying the same. No surprise that they claim CIA and RAW is responsible for Pakistan's woes. I've read some absurd things from those columns. I once read that RAAM(Afghanistan's secret agency,I presumed) is named after the Hindu God Ram and this proved that RAW supported Afghanistan's intelligence agencies. I had tears in my eyes. I kid you not. :)

Here is a interesting report in the News on polls conducted in India and Pakistan on relations between the two nations:

By Mohammad Malick

ISLAMABAD: The two nations have repeatedly gone to war in the past. Their governments continue sabre rattling and spewing bellicose rhetoric. But identical nationwide opinion surveys conducted by the Jang Group and the Times of India Group in India and Pakistan show that a majority of the billion and a half people of the sub-continent want to live as peaceful and friendly neighbours and share the same humane goals like any other civilised polity; economic prosperity for all, education for the youth, health for the needy, absence of violence and elimination of existential threats.

In Pakistan, 72 per cent of the respondents desired “peaceful and friendly relations with India” whereas 60 per cent Indians were hopeful of such an eventuality. This relative lesser percentage may be owing to the fact that presently 88 per cent of Indians consider Pakistan as a high/moderate threat to India’s well being. In contrast, 72 per cent Pakistanis perceive India as a high/moderate threat. The 88 per cent threat perception notwithstanding, it is heartening to note, however, that over 59 per cent of Indians think that a peaceful relationship would be established with Pakistan within their lifetime, an optimism shared by 64 percent Pakistanis.

While vested interests on both sides may have led the people to believe that every Pakistani wakes up paranoid with India and that every Indian goes to bed fretting over the next deadly Pakistani move, statistics show otherwise. Half the people polled in India thought about Pakistan “sometimes”, while only 16 per cent thought about us in a more focused manner. As for Pakistanis, 32 per cent appeared to be seriously concerned over the state of our bilateral relations. Hardly the figures for two peoples supposedly obsessed with each other’s ultimate annihilation, would not you agree?

Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari Wednesday called for greater “oversight and accountability” in the operations of the country’s intelligence agencies, and suggested a standing committee of parliament on intelligence be set up, like other such committees, to meet the needs of good governance in a democratic society.

Delivering the Fourth R.N. Kao Memorial Lecture organised by the Resarch and Intelligence Wing (RAW) of the Cabinet Secretariat, Ansari said although ministerial responsibility to the legislature, and in turn to the electorate, was an essential element of democratic governance, exceptions to it pertained to the “intelligence and security structure of the state”. This had only executive and political oversight.

He said the present system, though accepted for so long, did not “meet the requirements of good governance in an open society” and concerns have been raised over the scope and extent of the political executive’s supervision as also the possibility of misuse of these services.

Riaz, WAIT!!! you didnt compare India and Pakistan this time! Oh wait! I forgot. You only compare India and Pak when you think you can showcase Pakistan in a better light than India. Here, a Civilian is calling for Intelligence agencies to get its act together and asking for increased accountability(rightly so.. In India Civvies are all powerful and they derive their power through a concept of elections that many Pakistanis dont recognize forget respect). But, in Pakistan ISI is answerable to no one. Same with the Military. Civvies are there to please the Master- The Americans.

I think I've a new found love for Afghan Taliban. I didnt know they didnt kill Civilians!

But, wait.. Didnt they kill a bunch of people in a market in Afghanistan??? May be it was an American ploy to bring a bad name to the Taliban,protectors of Islam. Yeah, I think that is what has happened.

Here is an interesting Op Ed piece in the Hindu, hinting at the possibility of the involvement of India's "shadowy security establishment" behind the IPL bidding fiasco:

When the Angels who rule India say they favour dialogue and peace with Pakistan but then fear to tread, is it any surprise that fools would rush in to destroy that virtuous path? We will never know whether somebody from our shadowy security establishment whispered something dark and fanciful in the ears of the owners and managers of the Indian Premier League as they went in for the player auction last week and if so, for whom he was batting.

Certainly, the manner in which every Pakistani cricketer was boycotted despite the initial expression of interest by the teams smacks of considerations other than sports, business or common sense. Most of all, the decision betrays such a poor understanding of the geographies of market development, brand building and soft power that its net effect will be to undermine India’s interests in the widest possible sense.

My own view is that the boycott was not ordered or engineered by the Government of India or any of its agencies acting on instructions from the top. But that does not free our leadership from the vicarious responsibility of needlessly perpetuating a bilateral vacuum that has produced one of the most spectacular self-dismissals sub-continental cricket — and diplomacy — have ever seen.

In the face of a popular backlash across the border, the Ministry of External Affairs rightly noted that the government had nothing to do with the IPL selection. But instead of expressing regret over an outcome that it played no direct role in producing, the MEA statement threw a heap of salt on the wounded national pride of all Pakistanis. “Pakistan,” the Ministry smugly declared, “should introspect on the reasons which have put a strain on relations between India and Pakistan and adversely impacted on peace, stability and prosperity in the region.”

If anything, a little introspection on the Indian side may have been equally appropriate, since some senior Ministers — including P. Chidambaram — later went out of their way to say the exclusion of Pakistani cricketers was indeed unfortunate. Apart from reflecting badly on India, the insulting exclusion has allowed reactionary, extremist elements in Pakistan to seize the moral high ground. And it has pushed Pakistani public opinion and civil society further into the embrace of those who would like to perpetuate a climate of hostility with India and who have more than a soft spot for terrorism.

Here is a report with some shocking revelations in Malegaon bomb blast trial of Purohit and his cohorts:

In a shocking revelation, an army officer, one of the 452 witnesses in the September 29 Malegaon blast case, has revealed in his statement that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had a grand design to split India into smaller independent countries by 2015.

According the statement, the officer had attended one of the meetings held by the Malegaon blast accused on April 12, 2008 at the Ram temple in Bhopal. The officer from the Army Education Corps said that he was shocked by the proceedings.

He added that an ex-Raw personnel, who was present in the meeting, divulged these sinister plans of splitting the nation, based on a similar operation in the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics).

The witness added that the ex-Raw official also revealed that the CIA had managed to penetrate several departments in India. The officer cautioned the witness that the meeting was being observed by the Intelligence Bureau.

Sinister plans

The officer met Lt Col Shrikant Purohit in an official dinner at the Officers' Mess of AEC training college and centre in the second week of December 2007 at Deolali. He told Purohit about a plan to take premature retirement to develop his village, and establish an old age home.

On January 26, 2008, Purohit asked him to come to Faridabad and meet a few people for his project. There he was introduced to Sameer Kulkarni and the other accused in the Malegaon blast case. Then on April 12, 2008, Purohit called him for a meeting at Ram Mandir. He met all the Malegaon accused and another 20 people, along with the ex-Raw officer and the IB source.

The former RAW officer spoke about the USSR and Purohit spoke about his plans to bring Abhinav Bharat to the fore. Purohit also spoke about Hindu fundamentals and his contacts in Israel and Thailand.

In a presentation to Pakistani media, Gen Kayani reiterated his widely reported comments on the Pakistan Army’s view of the situation in Afghanistan and the way forward there.

History, unresolved issues, India’s military capability and its ‘Cold Start’ doctrine meant that Pakistan could not afford to let its guard down. Repeating a well-known formulation, Gen Kayani said: “We plan on adversaries’ capabilities, not intentions.”

The tough, matter-of-fact line on India was in stark contrast to that of Gen Kayani’s predecessor, Gen (retd) Musharraf, who tried hard to push for peace with India in his latter years in power.------------------------The general was particularly keen to highlight the threat posed by India’s ‘Cold Start’ doctrine. Turing the traditional theory of war on its head, ‘Cold Start’ would permit the Indian Army to attack before mobilising, increasing the possibility of a “sudden spiral escalation”, according to Gen Kayani.

The Pakistan Army’s concerns about ‘Cold Start’ are well known, but Gen Kayani went as far as to put a timeline on its implementation: two years for India to achieve partial implementation and five years for full.

If true, the strategic impact could be of the highest order: defence analysts have speculated that ‘Cold Start’ may lead the Pakistan Army to lower its nuclear threshold as a way of deterring any punitive strikes or rapid capture of territory by the Indian armed forces.

Yet, Gen Kayani was also keen to point out that he did not have a one-dimensional view of security. Despite the fact that India’s defence budget is “seven times” that of Pakistan’s “there has to be a balance between development and military spending,” the general said.

He also pleaded that “peace and stability in South Asia should not be made hostage to a single terrorist act of a non-state actor”, a reference to the November 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Refusing to talk to Pakistan would send a bad signal on two counts: one, the non-state actors would know that they have the power to nudge India and Pakistan towards war; and two, within India it would become clear that relations with Pakistan could be suspended indefinitely.

The comments on India, though, came only later in an extended Power Point Presentation that covered everything from the operations in Swat and South Waziristan to the “way forward” in Afghanistan. Gen Kayani seemed relatively pleased with the reaction his presentation received when first unveiled at a meeting of chiefs of defence staff of Nato and its allied countries in Brussels late last month.

Emphasising what he termed the “fundamentals”, he claimed that until the Afghan government improved its credibility and governance record and until the Afghan population began to change its perception that Isaf is not winning, the Afghan government would not be able to establish its writ and the local Taliban would not be “weaned off”.

But on Afghanistan, too, India featured in Gen Kayani’s comments. Rejecting India’s reported interest in training the Afghan National Army and the country’s police force, Gen Kayani argued that Pakistan had a more legitimate expectation to do so.

Taken together, Gen Kayani’s comments suggest that the possibility of a thaw in relations between India and Pakistan any time soon is low.

Both India and Pakistan appear to have firmly lapsed into the old pattern of highlighting the differences between them and the threats they face from each other, while nominally leaving the door open to an improvement in relations if one side addresses the other’s concerns.

Unlike the past, though, the stakes appear to be higher because of the uncertain future of Afghanistan and a ‘nuclear overhang’ that may be affected by ‘Cold Start’.

Baluchistan, Pakistan’s biggest province, rarely gets much attention from the international media, and what little it does is dwarfed by that showered on Afghanistan. So it is with a certain amount of deliberate provocation that I ask the question posed in the headline: Is Baluchistan more strategically significant than Afghanistan?

Before everyone answers with a resounding “no”, do pause to consider that China – renowned for its long-term planning – has invested heavily in Baluchistan, including building a deep water port at Gwadar on the Arabian Sea to give it access to Gulf oil supplies. The region is rich in gas and minerals; attracting strong international interest in spite of a low-level insurgency by Baluch separatists.

Bordering both Iran and Afghanistan, it lies along the sectarian and geopolitical faultlines that have fissured the region since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and Soviet invasion of Afghanistan later that year. Its capital, Quetta, is often cited by Washington as a haven for the Afghan Taliban in the so-called Quetta shura, who operate independently of the more secular Baluch separatists.

The province is also a source of friction with India, with Pakistan accusing it of using its presence in Afghanistan to fund the Baluch separatists, a charge Delhi denies. Whatever the rights and wrongs of that argument, you can be fairly sure that anywhere lying on the intersection of Indian, Chinese and Pakistani interests will be strategically far more important than it might appear on the surface.

In that context, Forbes Magazine has a must-read take-out on China’s drive to develop its presence in Baluchistan.

“In the Pakistani province of Balochistan, South Asia and central Asia bleed into the Middle East. Bordered by Afghanistan, Iran and the Persian Gulf, and well endowed with oil, gas, copper, gold and coal reserves, Balochistan is a rich prize that should have foreign investors battering at the gates,” it says. “But for a half-century it has been the exclusive playground of the Pakistani government and its state-owned Chinese partners. China would prefer it to stay that way.”

For an entirely different view, Informed Comment has a guest contribution up by Berkeley academic Kiren Aziz Chaudhry. The arguments can be a bit distracting if you don’t buy into conspiracy theories about the reasons for the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. But do persevere until you get to the point where the writer identifies Baluchistan as the main centre of interest for the many rivalries across Afghanistan and Pakistan: “The fulcrum is the province of Balochistan. And within Balochistan, the pivot is the dusty, obscure coastal town of Gwadar. Gwadar has a spanking new deep water port. Wheels within wheels. Devices within devices.” It’s worth reading through to the end, if nothing else but because this little known part of the world deserves as many different voices as possible.

At the very least, both articles should leave you with a doubt in your mind about the original question as to whether Baluchistan is strategically more important than Afghanistan.

And then revisit another question I asked a year ago. Who will win the peace in Afghanistan?

The ISI is hated by Pakistan's enemies mainly because it is the best at what it does in terms of protecting Pakistan interests. Some in the CIA, RAW and Mossad show a natural professional jealousy and envy of the ISI....and they try and slander it as often as they can through their friendly media and its blind followers.

Formed 1948Jurisdiction Government of PakistanHeadquarters Islamabad, PakistanAgency executive Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, PA Director General

With the lengthiest track record of success, the best know Intelligence so far on the scale of records is ISI. The Inter-Services Intelligence was created as an independent unit in 1948 in order to strengthen the performance of Pakistan’s Military Intelligence during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947. Its success in achieving its goal without leading to a full scale invasion of Pakistan by the Soviets is a feat unmatched by any other through out the intelligence world. KGB, The best of its time, failed to counter ISI and protect Soviet interests in Central Asia. This GOLD MEDAL makes it rank higher than Mossad. It has had 0 double agents or Defectors through out its history, considering that in light of the whole war campaign it carried out from money earned by selling drugs bought from the very people it was bleeding, The Soviets. It has protected its Nuclear Weapons since formed and it has foiled Indian attempts to attain ultimate supremacy in the South-Asian theatres through internal destabilization of India. It is above All laws in its host country Pakistan ‘A State, with in a State’. Its policies are made ‘outside’ of all other institutions with the exception of The Army. Its personnel have never been caught on camera. Its is believed to have the highest number of agents worldwide, close to 10,000. The most striking thing is that its one of the least funded Intelligence agency out of the top 10 and still the strongest.

Some 1500+ Taliban were taken prisoner by the Northern Alliance after the Afghanistan invasion, and were sent to India.Why?A large number were returned to Afghanistan some years later. What kind of bargain was struck? What kind of indoctrination? What were they expected to do on condition of release?Soon afterwards, (also mentioned by Graham Fuller, Scahill) a 'third country's' consulates inside Afghanistan began setting up and funding some 70 madrassahs to produce militants who will bomb locations inside Pakistan, including mosques.It is an easy, convincing sell to the militants to get them to bomb Sufi shrines and Shia targets, which they see as 'unislamic' to begin with, in their view.Perhaps Pakistan's tribals and militants are being used against Pakistan itself by others?According to Michael Scheuer (writing for "Terrorism Focus):"The Indian government, however, recognized a key strategic, anti-Pakistan opportunity when it saw one and is trying – with President Karzai eagerly assisting - to permanently deprive Pakistan of a quiet western border.In addition, Kabul has given New Delhi permission to establish an historically unprecedented Indian diplomatic presence in Afghanistan, with an embassy in Kabul, and consulates in Mazar-e-Sharif, Jalalabad, Kandahar, and Herat (Power and Interest News, March 23, 2007). Finally, New Delhi has created programs to inculcate pro-Indian views among Afghans."The evidence traced back from the bombers in Lahore, Faiselabad, Quetta, and Karachi leads back to this 'third country' and certain funded groups within Pakistan, who have been seen to bomb first one Sunni mosque, and then drive to bomb another Shia mosque.We have to face the fact that yes, these were Pakistani-created militants to begin with, created by out own actions.But they are now serving a different master/masters, and are being used to carry out the first phase to destabilize Pakistan in preparation for it's break-up ... first Balochistan and then the remainder.

Here's piece by a former CIA official Michael Scheuer on Indian involvement in Pakistan's internal security problems:

Immediately after 9/11, President Musharraf allied Pakistan with the United States and helped it and NATO remove the Taliban regime from power, thereby wrecking one-third of Pakistan’s national security strategy by dethroning a pro-Pakistan, Islamist, and Pashtun-dominated Afghan government and unsettling the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Musharraf then sent military forces into the country’s tribal regions, where they were defeated by the Taliban and Pakistani Pashtuns. Finally, the Pakistani military’s prolonged operations in the tribal regions have so angered the never very pro-Islamabad Pashtun tribes that warfare between them and the army continues, a situation that has given birth to a Pakistani Taliban. This unrest has revived the Pashtuns’ long-dormant interest in seceding from Pakistan and creating a nation – called Pashtunistan - comprised of tribal lands straddling the border. Such an event would leave Pakistan as a narrow strip of territory that could not be defended against India.

Needless to say, none of these developments pleased Musharraf’s fellow general officers, but at least there has been a payback for Pakistan - $10 billion dollars in U.S. aid and the chance for Islamabad to buy a new generation of F-16s. Until recently it seemed certain that the United States and NATO would not stay in Afghanistan forever and that Pakistan’s western border could be quieted after they left.

The Indian government, however, recognized a key strategic, anti-Pakistan opportunity when it saw one and is trying – with President Karzai eagerly assisting - to permanently deprive Pakistan of a quiet western border. Since the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, India has been in the forefront of the Afghan reconstruction effort. India has now pledged about $1.2 billion in aid and is the fifth biggest donor after the United States, the UK, Japan, and Germany (khabrein.info, August 3). New Delhi also has deployed between 3,000 and 4,000 Indian nationals to Afghanistan to assist in road-building and other infrastructure projects (Indian Express [Mumbai], July 29).

In addition, Kabul has given New Delhi permission to establish an historically unprecedented Indian diplomatic presence in Afghanistan, with an embassy in Kabul, and consulates in Mazar-e-Sharif, Jalalabad, Kandahar, and Herat (Power and Interest News, March 23, 2007). Finally, New Delhi has created programs to inculcate pro-Indian views among Afghans, such as the provision of full scholarships for Afghan bureaucrats to train in India’s technical institutions and for Afghan students to attend Indian universities (Times of India, August 4).

My reason for writing these posts is simple, really: I want Pakistan to be a progressive state, with positive relations with all its neighbors, as well as the rest of the world. That necessarily means clarifying perceptions that I might see as untrue.A tall order, admittedly, given the negative perception of the country and doubts that Pakistan may not even survive.But the first step is to understand the truth of what is happening in the region, and to do that the question to ask is: Who benefits?I may be wrong. If so, I am willing to listen to alternative viewpoints. Let's assume for the sake of argument that what I said was all 'conspiracy theory' etc. We would then need an alternative 'sensible' explanation and solution:So, is India, indeed, magnanimous and altruistic in its spending of billions toward Afghanistan infrastructure, electric grids, education programs for Afghans, etc?Perhaps.There's also this: that it's along with the two modern Indian air bases in Northern Afghanistan, the 14+ 'consulates' all along the Afghan-Pakistan border, the 'special' Afghan students in India, the creation of RAAM along the lines of RAW with Northern Alliance men, the frequent (photographed) visits of Baloch separatist leaders in Indian consulates, the bombers of mosques and shrines who have been followed, tracked and found to have ties to Indian 'consulates').Who benefits? Is it true that the militant activity is blowback for Pakistan from its militant creations?Yes, true. But who is funding/arming them now? Because after Pakistan went against them under pressure from the US, they turned against Pakistan, which was the only possible outcome. Whose strategy did this fulfil?Who benefits?Another element in the mix: Who created Jundallah? Who funds and arms it? After they killed several Iranian generals, Pakistan captured and turned over some of their leaders to Iran. Care to guess their funding?Who benefits?

As regards Deobandi, Wahabbi, Naqshbandi, Cheshire cats, Muggles or any other ilk: These are just red herrings. They are levers to use and pull, in order to get the poor ignorant sods to blow themselves up by reinforcing their twisted beliefs.The real question is: who is pulling the levers?Who benefits?

But these are merely smaller subsets in the new overall "Great Game" which is what seems to be happening.

1. The present "Great Game" is control and access routes to oil/energy and the region for the next 40 or so years until alternative sources are developed2. To provide a market for the military products of the military-industrial complex by perpetual war.There is no intention of leaving the region.The main competitors/players battling for access/control of the region are the US, China and the partners of these two. Within this battle are the subsets of regional conflicts.China’s building of the port in Gwadar, Balochistan gives it direct access to the Persian Gulf and allows it a cheaper route for its energy needs. The only way to block this is to control Pakistan. One method to ‘control’ Pakistan was suggested by Maj. Ralph Peters in his now infamous redrawn map of the region which advocated a break-up of Pakistan.India, ready and willing, is the means by which the break-up of Pakistan is being envisaged, through its ‘consulates’ in Afghanistan that fund the militant groups (the Baloch groups, the Pakistani Taliban, etc) which are bombing Pakistani cities, Shia/Sunni mosques, Sufi shrines etc. Mercenaries are already in place inside Pakistan.Negative media portrayal of Pakistan is another important component to prepare the public should a war take place. They will be more accepting of a war on a country that has a negative image.It is no coincidence that such portrayals are already at a high level, and that some violent incidents take place when needed.

Here is an analysis by Ahmad Quraishi on the eve of Pak-US strategic dialog:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—There is a very simple question that every Pakistani government official needs to ask the Americans: If you fail to pacify the Pashtun in Afghanistan, is it Pakistan’s responsibility to sever historical ties and wage war against them?

This is the mother of all questions because it deals with the issue of some, not all, of the Afghan Taliban using Pakistani territory to attack occupation armies in their country. Apparently this is the excuse the United States is using to expand its failed Afghan war into Pakistan. US officials say Pakistanis are unable to exercise sovereignty over their own territory. US proxies inside Pakistan – in politics and media – then use this argument to ask another question: Isn’t Al Qaeda and Afghan Taliban violating Pakistani sovereignty by using our border pockets as hideouts away from action inside Afghanistan? This argument is used to justify US violations of the Pak-Afghan international border. If Afghan Taliban can violate Pakistan’s border, why not the US military? So the justification goes.

Pakistan still has time to come out strongly with two arguments at policy level. One, there is no way of completely stopping Pakistani Pashtuns – who are an integral part of the Pakistani nation – from sympathizing with the Pashtuns in Afghanistan. And Two, US must solve the ‘Pashtun problem’ inside Afghanistan. The solution is not by starting a war between the Pakistani military – manned in substantial part by the Pashtuns – and between Pakistani or Afghan Pashtuns, like the so-called Haqqani network. This will not fix the toy the Americans broke in Afghanistan.

In other words: What is it the US is doing wrong in Afghanistan to spur Pashtun and Taliban resistance, including pushing some of them into Pakistan? And should Pakistan respond by killing the Pashtun because the US says so?

There are two more strong arguments that can strengthen a Pakistani policy review, which is overdue nine years into a failed war.

One is the fact that Pashtun and Taliban resistance against occupation in Afghanistan is not a function of Pakistani tribal areas. The US military dare not claim that Pakistan’s devastated tribal belt is alone responsible for the rout facing US, NATO and ISAF forces across Afghanistan. But this is what the Americans imply when they shift the world focus to Pakistan without anyone from the Pakistani side disputing this twisted American logic.

And the second argument has to do with al Qaeda. Pakistan needs to dispute the American claims about the quality and strength of Al Qaeda presence in the Pakistani tribal belt. London’s International Institute of Strategic Studies is not exactly a den of antiwar activism. In a report last month, the think tank questioned the US policy line that al Qaeda is strong enough to threaten anyone beyond Afghanistan or Pakistan.

If anything, we are seeing a US-occupied Afghanistan becoming a magnet for unknown terrorists from multiple backgrounds and questionable loyalties using Afghan soil to enter our tribal belt, as in the case of the Germans involved in the alleged Mumbai-style Europe terror plot. Washington is conveniently using these conspiracy theories to expand its war inside Pakistani territory without any credible evidence.

Pakistan does not have a quarrel with Afghan Pashtuns or the Afghan Taliban. The latest US reports and assertions that Pakistan or its spy agencies maintain contacts with either are ridiculous. Islamabad must maintain those contacts. In fact, we must expand contacts with the Afghan Taliban in view of the double game the United States played with us in Afghanistan over the last eight years, where it turned Kabul into Anti-Pakistan Central and deliberately expanded and continues to encourage Indian presence on our western borders...."

Here are some excerpts from a piece by David Pilling of Financial Times published recently:

(There have ben many a dire warning about Pakistan failing), yet Pakistan has survived. In its partial victories against Islamist militants it may even have made some kind of progress. It is all too easy to think of Pakistan as a failing – even a failed – state. But it might be better to see it as the state that refuses to fail.

To appreciate just how remarkable this is, cast your mind back to this dangerous year’s catalogue of fire and brimstone. First, following its victory in Swat, the army turned its attention on South Waziristan, bombarding militants in lawless areas bordering Afghanistan. Many considered that an important step, given the well-documented links between the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency and tribal militants, part of Pakistan’s quest for “strategic depth” in Afghanistan.

Second, and partly as a result of the army’s offensives, there has been a wave of counter-attacks on hotels, mosques and police stations. Last October, militants mounted a brazen raid on the supposedly impregnable headquarters of the 500,000-strong army. That led to alarm that men with beards and a less-than-glowing feeling towards America were getting perilously close to Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.

Third, Pakistan has had to adapt to a dramatic shift in US policy towards Afghanistan. In December, President Barack Obama ordered a surge of 30,000 extra troops, a military intensification that has sent militants scurrying across the border into Pakistan. Worse from Islamabad’s point of view, the US president has committed to drawing down those troops from next summer, a retreat, if it happens, that would once again leave Pakistan alone in a nasty neighbourhood.

Fourth, the economic outlook remains precarious. Pakistan just about avoided a balance of payments crisis which, at one point, saw its reserves dwindle to just one month’s import cover. But respite has come at the cost of being in hock to the International Monetary Fund, which has extended some $7bn in loans. With tax receipts at a miserable 9 per cent of output, it is unclear how it will make ends meet.

As if these man-made calamities were not enough, Pakistan has been drowning in the worst floods in its history. At one point, no less than one-fifth of the country was under water.....

Remarkably it has not been. Why not? A partial explanation for Pakistan’s staying power is that it has become an extortionary state that thrives on crisis...

There are more benign explanations too. The strength of civil society has helped. Many refugees from the floods, like those from Swat, have found temporary shelter with the networks of friends and relatives that bind the country together. The army’s response to the floods has also underscored, for better or worse, the efficiency of the state’s best-run institution. Even the civilian administration, weak and discredited as it is, has clung on. If, as now seems plausible, Mr Zardari can survive, power could yet be transferred from one democratically elected administration to another for the first time in Pakistan’s 63-year history.

One should not overstate Pakistan’s resilience. The world is rightly alarmed at the mayhem that rages at its centre. But, if you care to look on the bright side, you might conclude that, if Pakistan can survive a year like this, it can survive anything.

Are Pakistani Taliban supported by India? UAE Security officials believe so, according to Wikileaks as reported by Deccan Herald.

UAE's security officials believed that India along with Iran had supported the Pakistani Taliban and Pushtun separatists, even as US suggested that UAE was a source of funding for the militants, a diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks discloses.

The strange allegation by UAE officials is noted in a State Department cable, which reports the details of a meeting between officials of the US treasury department and those of UAE's State Security Department (SSD) and Dubai's general department of state security (GDSS) to discuss suspected Taliban-related financial activity in the UAE.

The meeting, spread over several hours on December 15-16, 2009. In the meeting, GDSS officials noted Iran's support to Taliban in Pakistan, adding that it believes that India also has supported Pakistani Taliban and Pashtun separatists.

The meeting from the US side was represented by Treasury Department Acting Assistant Secretary of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis Howard Mendelsohn.

Mendelsohn also raised Afghanistan and Pakistan-based extremist and terrorist groups, to include Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) and Jamaat al-Dawa al-Quran wa al-Sunna (JDQ), according to the cable.

Faisal Shehzad, the passionate but thankfully incompetent Times Square bomber, is an example of a genuine terror plot not created by FBI informants. Here is how he rationalized his involment to a judge in New York, as reported in The Guardian:

After several questions, (Judge) Cedarbaum asked, "Why do you want to plead guilty?"

"I want to plead guilty and I'm going to plead guilty 100 times forward because until the hour the US pulls its forces from Iraq and Afghanistan and stops the drone strikes in Somalia and Yemen and in Pakistan and stops the occupation of Muslim lands and stops Somalia and Yemen and in Pakistan, and stops the occupation of Muslim lands, and stops killing the Muslims and stops reporting the Muslims to its government, we will be attacking US, and I plead guilty to that.---------"Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan," he said uncertainly. "I… with them, I did the training to wage an attack inside United States of America."

"I see. How to make a bomb or how to detonate a bomb? What were you taught?"

"The whole thing: how to make a bomb, how to detonate a bomb, how to put a fuse, how many different types of bombs you can make." ...

"Is there a particular Taliban?" Cedarbaum asked at one point.

"Well, there are two Talibans; one is Taliban Afghanistan, the other is Taliban Pakistan. And I went to join the Taliban Pakistan."

"I see. Has that always been there?"

"It recently… they… the organisation was made… was made, like, six years ago when the first time Pakistan took a U-turn on the Taliban Afghanistan, and obviously the tribal area in Pakistan is the… was the harbouring for the mujahideen fighting in Afghanistan. So the Pakistan took a U-turn and they became allied with US and they went against the Taliban and start fighting and killing them. So during that time, the Afghan Taliban made a group to encounter the Pakistan government forces, and that's when Taliban Pakistan came into being. Six years ago, maybe."----... And he chose Times Square on a Saturday night so he could maximise the mayhem? "Yes. Damage to the building and to injure or kill people. But again, I would point out one thing in connection to the attack, that one has to understand where I'm coming from, because this is… I consider myself a mujahid, a Muslim soldier. The US and the Nato forces, along with 40, 50 countries, has attacked the Muslim lands. We… " Cedarbaum interrupted: "But not the people who were walking in Times Square that night," she said slowly. "Did you look around to see who 'they' were?"

"Well, the people select the government. We consider them all the same. The drones, when they hit…"

"Including the children?" the judge interrupted Shahzad once again.

There was a long pause.

"Well, the drone hits in Afghanistan and Iraq," he finally said, "they don't see children, they don't see anybody. They kill women, children, they kill everybody. It's a war, and in war, they kill people. They're killing all Muslims."

"Now we're not talking about them; we're talking about you."

"Well, I am part of that. I am part of the answer to the US terrorising the Muslim nations. I'm avenging the attacks because the Americans only care about their people, but they don't care about the people elsewhere in the world when they die. Similarly, in Gaza Strip, somebody has to go and live with the family whose house is bulldozed by the Israeli bulldozer. There's a lot of aggression…"

In Pakistan most of the killing of civilians by US drone-fired missiles goes unrecorded. There is no doubt many of the 100 drone strikes this year have killed some very nasty people, but it would be ridiculous to claim there have been no civilian casualties. The attacks take place in remote areas of the country, and the dead are rarely seen by independent witnesses. But the slaughter of his fellow citizens by US missiles is not a cause for concern to Pakistan’s President Zardari who is reported in Bob Woodward’s ‘Obama’s Wars’ as telling the Director of the CIA in 2008 that “Collateral damage worries you Americans. It does not worry me.”...But there is not only butchery in the drone campaign ; there is colossal damage being done to Pakistan, with massive propaganda advantage to insurrectionists, extremists, thugs and anarchists of all descriptions. The country is in ferment and on the edge of social disaster. There could hardly be a worse time for the US, in concert with an unpopular, corruption-struck and feeble government, to carry on blitzing.

The US has achieved control and lost credibility. But the government of Pakistan has lost both. That’s collateral damage, too.

I think your premise is logically unstable as Intelligence wings across the globes HAVE TO BE RIGHT wing(Here right means ultra nationalist or those dedicated to the guiding political philosophy of the nation.)First duty of any Intelligence wing is protect the nation by hook or crook.RAW is doing just fine.

Can Intelligence be based on religion with strong doses of ethnicity (a highly impractical mindset in 21st century) and above all getting more personal fortune? Can Intelligence organization be run purely on megalomania ?

Here's an excerpt from a shocking report in The Express Tribune about the possible involvement of "Raymond Davis" with the terrorists of the Pakistani Taliban, the TTP:

“The Lahore killings were a blessing in disguise for our security agencies who suspected that Davis was masterminding terrorist activities in Lahore and other parts of Punjab,” a senior official in the Punjab police claimed.

“His close ties with the TTP were revealed during the investigations,” he added. “Davis was instrumental in recruiting young people from Punjab for the Taliban to fuel the bloody insurgency.” Call records of the cellphones recovered from Davis have established his links with 33 Pakistanis, including 27 militants from the TTP and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi sectarian outfit, sources said.

Davis was also said to be working on a plan to give credence to the American notion that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are not safe. For this purpose, he was setting up a group of the Taliban which would do his bidding.

Indian newspaper The Hindu is publishing some wikileaks cables on India. Here are a few interesting ones:

1. The Hindu reveals that PM Singh isolated on wanting talks with Pakistan:

During the interaction, Mr. Narayanan, who had been described by the Embassy in a January 12, 2005 cable (25259: confidential) as a long-time Gandhi family loyalist “who is seen as part of the traditional ‘coterie' around Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi,” came through as a hardliner on Pakistan, never afraid to voice his differences with Prime Minister Singh.

In an August 11, 2009 cable (220281: confnoforn), sent a day after the meeting, Mr. Roemer noted that Mr. Narayanan, a former chief of the Intelligence Bureau who is now Governor of West Bengal, readily conceded that he had differences with Prime Minister Singh on Pakistan. The Prime Minister was a “great believer” in talks and negotiations with Islamabad, but Mr. Narayanan himself was “not a great believer in Pakistan.”

2. India was locked in a tussle with the United States over sharing information from the 2008 Mumbai attacks investigation with Pakistan, according to a chain of U.S. Embassy cables accessed by The Hindu through WikiLeaks.

During the India-Pakistan standoff in the aftermath of the 26/11 attacks, the Federal Bureau of Investigation helped the two sides share information of each other's investigations.

But India, suspicious of Pakistan's intentions, tried as long as it could to fend off U.S. pressure on information-sharing — before relenting, but with some conditions.

Unhappy about those conditions, the U.S. then sought to work around them through a “broad” reading of the assent.

On January 3, 2009 Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice instructed the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi to deliver a demarche (cable 185593: secret) that the U.S. was making available to it material on the Mumbai attacks provided by the Government of Pakistan.

Dr. Rice asked Ambassador David Mulford to tell New Delhi that “this information originated from top Pakistani officials in very sensitive positions and is passed to you with their permission. It represents a genuine willingness on their part to share sensitive and significant information with India.”

Here are some excerpts from an Op Ed in The Hindu on Wikileaks cables showing growing US and Israeli influence in New Delhi:

The publication and analysis of the US embassy cables accessed by The Hindu through WikiLeaks is ongoing, but what has been made available so far reveals a disturbing picture. The US has acquired an influential position in various spheres - strategic affairs, foreign policy and economic policies. The US has access to the bureaucracy, military, security and intelligence systems and has successfully penetrated them at various levels. The cables cover a period mainly from 2005 to 2009, the very period when the UPA government went ahead to forge the strategic alliance with the US. --------The volte face by the Manmohan Singh government in voting against Iran in the IAEA in September 2005 was one such crucial event. The cables illustrate how the US government exercised maximum pressure to achieve this turn around. The Indian government was told that unless India takes a firm stand against Iran, the US Congress would not pass the legislation to approve the nuclear deal. ------------Other cables reveal how the United States succeeded in getting India to coordinate policy towards other countries in South Asia like Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The close cooperation with Israel under US aegis is also spelt out.

The success achieved in getting India's foreign policy to be "congruent" to US policy is smugly stated in an embassy cable that Indian officials are ‘loathe to admit publicly that India and the US have begun coordinating foreign policies'. ----------One of the cables from the US ambassador to the American defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld spells out the agenda which the Americans hope to accomplish during the visit. The Defence Framework Agreement was the first of this type to be signed by India with any country. It envisages a whole gamut of cooperation between the armed forces of the two countries. It is evident from the cables that the US government and the Pentagon had been negotiating and planning for such an agreement from the time of the NDA government. ------------The cables show the growing coordination of the security establishments of the two countries reaching a high level of cooperation after the Mumbai terrorist attack. The then National Security Advisor, M K Narayanan was seen by the Americans as eager to establish a high degree of security cooperation involving agencies such as the FBI and the CIA.

The cables also provide a glimpse of how the Americans are able to penetrate the intelligence and security apparatus. Among the forty cables which were first published by the British paper, The Guardian, there are two instances of improper contacts. In the first case a member of the National Security Advisory Board meets an American embassy official and offers to provide information about Iranian contacts in India and requests for his visit to the United States to be arranged in return. In another case the US embassy reports that it is able to get access to terrorism related information directly from a police official serving in the Delhi Police, rather than going through official channels. ---------------The collaboration between the intelligence and security agencies of the two countries had already resulted in American penetration. Two cases of espionage had come up. During the NDA government, a RAW officer, Rabinder Singh was recruited by the CIA. When his links were uncovered, he was helped by the CIA to flee to the United States. During the UPA government a systems analyst in the National Security Council secretariat was found to have been recruited by the CIA, the contact having been established through the US-India Cyber Security Forum.

For readers who find it hard to believe that RAW is working with Taliban, here are a few questions:

1. Do you know that Hamas was created by Mossad?

2. Do you know that CIA has infiltrated al Qaeda and Taliban ranks?

3. Do you know that Raymond Davis was working with LeT when he was arrested in Lahore?

4. Did you ever hear about the Khost incident where a CIA recruit to infiltrate AQ turned against the CIA and killed several CIA agents and contractors?

Answers to the above can found in the same media, ranging from NY Times, Wall St Journal, Haaretz, New Yorker, that are often quoted as credible.

As a sample of reports on Mossad-Hamas close ties, here's one story by the Wall Street Journal:

Surveying the wreckage of a neighbor's bungalow hit by a Palestinian rocket, retired Israeli official Avner Cohen traces the missile's trajectory back to an "enormous, stupid mistake" made 30 years ago.

"Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel's creation," says Mr. Cohen, a Tunisian-born Jew who worked in Gaza for more than two decades. Responsible for religious affairs in the region until 1994, Mr. Cohen watched the Islamist movement take shape, muscle aside secular Palestinian rivals and then morph into what is today Hamas, a militant group that is sworn to Israel's destruction.

Instead of trying to curb Gaza's Islamists from the outset, says Mr. Cohen, Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat's Fatah. Israel cooperated with a crippled, half-blind cleric named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, even as he was laying the foundations for what would become Hamas. Sheikh Yassin continues to inspire militants today; during the recent war in Gaza, Hamas fighters confronted Israeli troops with "Yassins," primitive rocket-propelled grenades named in honor of the cleric.

Is there a difference between "infiltrating" and "working with" as reported about Raymond Davis and LeT?

Let's not forget that CIA moles also facilitate the work of the "bad guys" in the orgs they infiltrate, as was the case with Switzerland's Tinner family, Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, Urs and Marco, who infiltrated the AQ Khan network and helped him for years in nuclear proliferation for personal profit, according to NY Times.

A Guardian newspaper report says that "An al-Qaida operative accused of bombing two Christian churches and a luxury hotel in Pakistan in 2002 was at the same time working for British intelligence, according to secret files on detainees who were shipped to the US military's Guantánamo Bay prison camp."

Adil Hadi al Jazairi Bin Hamlili, an Algerian citizen described as a "facilitator, courier, kidnapper, and assassin for al-Qaida", was detained in Pakistan in 2003 and later sent to Guantánamo Bay.

But according to Hamlili's Guantánamo "assessment" file, one of 759 individual dossiers obtained by the Guardian, US interrogators were convinced that he was simultaneously acting as an informer for British and Canadian intelligence.

After his capture in June 2003 Hamlili was transferred to Bagram detention centre, north of Kabul, where he underwent numerous "custodial interviews" with CIA personnel.

They found him "to have withheld important information from the Canadian Secret Intelligence Service and British Secret Intelligence Service … and to be a threat to US and allied personnel in Afghanistan and Pakistan".

Here's an Op Ed by a retired Indian diplomat KH Bhadrakumar published in The Hindu:

The fact of the matter is that the U.S. has been holding direct talks with the Taliban. It has been able to do this largely because of the extensive intelligence network it has created in Pakistan — which became possible because Islamabad allowed it to happen. That, ironically, enables Washington to dispense with the good offices of the Pakistani military and the ISI, and opt for direct interaction with the insurgent groups. The U.S. intelligence network within Pakistan has penetrated the range of insurgent groups — the Afghan Taliban, the “Pakistan Taliban,” and non-Taliban (Afghan and Pakistani) militant groups. Evidently, if the drone attacks are becoming more “result-oriented,” it is due to real-time intelligence inputs. During the six weeks of gruelling interrogation of U.S. intelligence operative Raymond Davis, the Pakistani military caught on to a host of home truths. By now, the Pakistani military would have a fair idea of the extent of the American intelligence network and its potential to play merry havoc by splintering insurgent groups, pitting one group against another, manipulating factionalism within groups, monitoring the terror network and, conceivably, even turning some of the insurgent groups into instruments of U.S. regional policies. (Tehran insists that the U.S. is indulging in covert operations in Pakistan and Iran.)

Suffice it to say the Pakistani military leadership wishes to draw a redline for the U.S.' covert operations so that Washington will be compelled to deal with militant Afghan groups through the single window of the ISI — within the parameters set by what old-timers call the “[Ronald] Reagan rules” during the Afghan jihad of the 1980s. There is hardly any leeway for Pakistan to compromise on this demand, which aims at revising the ground rules of the U.S.-Pakistan strategic partnership in the conduct of the Afghan war (based hitherto on unspoken, unwritten, ever-deniable and flexible templates of collaboration).-----------Of course, Pakistan is justified in wondering what is there for it in this scenario. This wasn't how the war was supposed to end. Obviously, Washington's priorities will change once the intensity of the fighting declines. For one thing, the U.S. aid flow will decline. Once the U.S. strengthens its direct line to the insurgents, its dependence on the Pakistani military can only decline. But Pakistan's objective of gaining “strategic depth” in Afghanistan remains elusive. Equally, Pakistan will be left grappling with an assortment of militant groups along its long, disputed border with Afghanistan that have been highly radicalised by the U.S.-led war. These include some groups which have been alienated one way or the other by Pakistan's role as the U.S.' “key non-NATO ally.”

Pakistan faces an existential crisis in its Pashtun tribal tract that has borne the brunt of the U.S.-led war. As last Saturday's London Times report shows, there will be all sorts of attempts to muddy the waters. It suits the U.S. strategy to give the Afghan endgame the exaggerated overtones of an India-Pakistan turf war. The Indian establishment acted wisely to open dialogue with Pakistan in Mohali.

Pakistan is lobbying Afghanistan's president against building a long-term strategic partnership with the U.S., urging him instead to look to Pakistan—and its Chinese ally—for help in striking a peace deal with the Taliban and rebuilding the economy, Afghan officials say.----------Pakistan enjoys particular leverage in Afghanistan because of its historic role in fostering the Taliban movement and its continuing support for the Afghan Taliban insurgency. Washington's relations with Pakistan, ostensibly an ally, have reached their lowest point in years following a series of missteps on both sides.

Pakistani officials say they no longer have an incentive to follow the American lead in their own backyard. "Pakistan is sole guarantor of its own interest," said a senior Pakistani official. "We're not looking for anyone else to protect us, especially the U.S. If they're leaving, they're leaving and they should go."-----------The leaks about what went on at the April 16 meeting officials appear to be part of that effort. Afghans in the pro-U.S. camp who shared details of the meeting with The Wall Street Journal said they did so to prompt the U.S. to move faster toward securing the strategic partnership agreement, which is intended to spell out the relationship between the two countries after 2014. "The longer they wait…the more time Pakistan has to secure its interests," said one of the pro-U.S. Afghan officials.-------

Yet in a reflection of U.S. concerns about Pakistan's overtures, the commander of the U.S.-led coalition, Gen. David Petraeus, has met Mr. Karzai three times since April 16, in part to reassure the Afghan leader that he has America's support, and to nudge forward progress on the partnership deal, said Afghan and U.S. officials.----------Formal negotiations on the so-called Strategic Partnership Declaration began in March. Details of talks between U.S. and Afghan negotiators so far remain sketchy. The most hotly contested issue is the possibility of long-term U.S. military bases remaining in Afghanistan beyond 2014 to buttress and continue training Afghan forces and carry on the fight against al Qaeda.-----------The opening of talks in March was enough to raise alarms among Afghanistan's neighbors. Senior Iranian and Russian officials quickly made treks to Kabul to express their displeasure at the possibility of a U.S. military presence after 2014, Afghan officials said. The Taliban have always said they wouldn't sign on to any peace process as long as foreign forces remain.------------Mr. Gilani repeatedly referred to America's "imperial designs," playing to a theme that Mr. Karzai has himself often embraced in speeches. He also said that, to end the war, Afghanistan and Pakistan needed to take "ownership" of the peace process, according to Afghans familiar with what was said at the meeting. Mr. Gilani added that America's economic problems meant it couldn't be expected to support long-term regional development. A better partner would be China, which Pakistanis call their "all-weather" friend, he said, according to participants in the meeting. He said the strategic partnership deal was ultimately an Afghan decision. But, he added, neither Pakistan nor other neighbors were likely to accept such a pact.----------Although a U.S. ally, Pakistan has its own interests in Afghanistan, believing it needs a pliant government in Kabul to protect its rear flank from India. Pakistani officials regularly complain of how India's influence over Afghanistan has grown in the past decade. Some Pakistani officials say the presence of U.S. and allied forces is the true problem in the region, not the Taliban.

Here's a NY Times story about shifting loyalties of a Libyan who has gone from being a US ally to an adversary and back to being an ally in Libya again:

For more than five years, Abu Sufian Ibrahim Ahmed Hamuda bin Qumu was a prisoner at the Guantánamo Bay prison, judged “a probable member of Al Qaeda” by the analysts there. They concluded in a newly disclosed 2005 assessment that his release would represent a “medium to high risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the U.S., its interests and allies.”

Today, Mr. Qumu, 51, is a notable figure in the Libyan rebels’ fight to oust Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, reportedly a leader of a ragtag band of fighters known as the Darnah Brigade for his birthplace, this shabby port town of 100,000 people in northeast Libya. The former enemy and prisoner of the United States is now an ally of sorts, a remarkable turnabout resulting from shifting American policies rather than any obvious change in Mr. Qumu.

He was a tank driver in the Libyan Army in the 1980s, when the Central Intelligence Agency was spending billions to support religious militants trying to drive Soviet troops out of Afghanistan. Mr. Qumu moved to Afghanistan in the early 1990s, just as Osama bin Laden and other former mujahedeen were violently turning against their former benefactor, the United States.

He was captured in Pakistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, accused of being a member of the militant Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, and sent to Guantánamo — in part because of information provided by Colonel Qaddafi’s government.

“The Libyan Government considers detainee a ‘dangerous man with no qualms about committing terrorist acts,’ ” says the classified 2005 assessment, evidently quoting Libyan intelligence findings, which was obtained by The New York Times. “ ‘He was known as one of the extremist commanders of the Afghan Arabs,’ ” the Libyan information continues, referring to Arab fighters who remained in Afghanistan after the anti-Soviet jihad.

When that Guantánamo assessment was written, the United States was working closely with Colonel Qaddafi’s intelligence service against terrorism. Now, the United States is a leader of the international coalition trying to oust Colonel Qaddafi — and is backing with air power the rebels, including Mr. Qumu.

The classified Guantánamo assessment of Mr. Qumu claims that he suffered from “a non-specific personality disorder” and recounted — again citing the Libyan government as its source — a history of drug addiction and drug dealing and accusations of murder and armed assault.

In 1993, the document asserts, Mr. Qumu escaped from a Libyan prison, fled to Egypt and went on to Afghanistan, training at a camp run by Mr. bin Laden. At Guantánamo, Mr. Qumu denied knowledge of terrorist activities. He said he feared being returned to Libya, where he faced criminal charges, and asked to go to some other country where “You (the United States) can watch me,” according to a hearing summary.

Nonetheless, in 2007, he was sent from Guantánamo to Libya and released the next year in an amnesty for militants.

Colonel Qaddafi has cited claims about Mr. Qumu’s past in statements blaming Al Qaeda for the entire Libyan uprising. American officials have nervously noted the presence of at least a few former militants in the rebels’ ranks.

Here's a new definition of "conspiracy" theory offered by former US Secretary of Treasury Paul Craig Roberts:

While we were not watching, conspiracy theory has undergone Orwellian redefinition.

A "conspiracy theory" no longer means an event explained by a conspiracy. Instead, it now means any explanation, or even a fact, that is out of step with the government's explanation and that of its media pimps.

For example, online news broadcasts of RT have been equated with conspiracy theories by the New York Times simply because RT reports news and opinions that the New York Times does not report and the US government does not endorse.

In other words, as truth becomes uncomfortable for government and its Ministry of Propaganda, truth is redefined as conspiracy theory, by which is meant an absurd and laughable explanation that we should ignore.

When piles of carefully researched books, released government documents, and testimony of eye witnesses made it clear that Oswald was not President John F. Kennedy's assassin, the voluminous research, government documents, and verified testimony was dismissed as "conspiracy theory."

In other words, the truth of the event was unacceptable to the authorities and to the Ministry of Propaganda that represents the interests of authorities.

The purest example of how Americans are shielded from truth is the media's (including many Internet sites') response to the large number of professionals who find the official explanation of September 11, 2001, inconsistent with everything they, as experts, know about physics, chemistry, structural engineering, architecture, fires, structural damage, the piloting of airplanes, the security procedures of the United States, NORAD's capabilities, air traffic control, airport security, and other matters.

These experts, numbering in the thousands, have been shouted down by know-nothings in the media who brand the experts as "conspiracy theorists."

This despite the fact that the official explanation endorsed by the official media is the most extravagant conspiracy theory in human history.

Let's take a minute to re-acquaint ourselves with the official explanation, which is not regarded as a conspiracy theory despite the fact that it comprises an amazing conspiracy.

The official truth is that a handful of young Muslim Arabs who could not fly airplanes, mainly Saudi Arabians who came neither from Iraq nor from Afghanistan, outwitted not only the CIA and the FBI, but also all 16 US intelligence agencies and all intelligence agencies of US allies including Israel's Mossad, which is believed to have penetrated every terrorist organization and which carries out assassinations of those whom Mossad marks as terrorists.

Karachi, Pakistan, The defection of a top Taliban militant commander in the troubled Kurrum tribal belt bordering Afghanistan is the first major sign of a split within the Pakistani Taliban. The split could benefit both Pakistan and the US, say analysts.

The notorious militant commander, Fazal Saeed Haqqani, announced his decision to quit the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) along with hundreds of militants and form his own group, Tehrik-e-Taliban Islami.

“I repeatedly told the leadership of the TTP that they should stop suicide attacks against mosques, markets, and other civilian targets,” the commander, who is in his late 30s, told reporters in Kurrum Agency on Monday.

“The TTP is doing in Pakistan what Americans are doing in Afghanistan, killing innocent civilians,” said the commander, adding that he would continue his fight against the Americans.

The TTP, or Taliban Movement of Pakistan, claims responsibility for most of the recent deadly suicide attacks across the country. The fracture within this terrorist outfit may be welcome news to Pakistan’s military, which has failed to break its backbone despite increasing US pressure and military offensives along the Afghan border.

“It is a good message for Pakistan and America both,” says Peshawar-based analyst Brig. (Ret.) Mehmood Shah. “This is the first dissenting voice from within and that, too, is coming from a powerful commander. It will definitely fracture the TTP, isolate it, and there might be more cracks to be seen in the near future.”

“It’s like clipping the wings of the TTP, especially in the important tribal area of Kurrum,” he suggests. Location, location, location

Kurrum carries tremendous significance for Pakistan and the US as it is the shortest route to Kabul from anywhere in Pakistan (here's a map of Kurrum). It borders Khost in the south, Paktia in the southwest, and Nagarhar in the north – all provinces considered to be strongholds of the Afghan Taliban.

The Pakistani Taliban and the Haqqani terror network, under the pressure of American drones in North Waziristan, have been eyeing Kurrum to get access to Afghanistan in order to join the Afghan Taliban in their fight against the US-led forces.

Here's an Economist magazine story about Indian interference in Bangladeshi politics on the side of the Awami League:

NOT much noticed by outsiders, long-troubled ties between two neighbours sharing a long border have taken a substantial lurch for the better. Ever since 2008, when the Awami League, helped by bags of Indian cash and advice, triumphed in general elections in Bangladesh, relations with India have blossomed. To Indian delight, Bangladesh has cracked down on extremists with ties to Pakistan or India’s home-grown terrorist group, the Indian Mujahideen, as well as on vociferous Islamist (and anti-Indian) politicians in the country. India feels that bit safer.

Now the dynasts who rule each country are cementing political ties. On July 25th Sonia Gandhi (pictured, above) swept into Dhaka, the capital, for the first time. Sharing a sofa with Sheikh Hasina (left), the prime minister (and old family friend), the head of India’s ruling Congress Party heaped praise on her host, notably for helping the poor. A beaming Sheikh Hasina reciprocated with a golden gong, a post humous award for Mrs Gandhi’s mother-in-law, Indira Gandhi. In 1971 she sent India’s army to help Bangladeshis, led by Sheikh Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, throw off brutal Pakistani rule.

As a result, officials this week chirped that relations are now “very excellent”. They should get better yet. India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, will visit early in September to sign deals on sensitive matters like sharing rivers, sending electricity over the border, settling disputed patches of territory on the 4,095km (2,500-mile) frontier and stopping India’s trigger-happy border guards from murdering migrants and cow-smugglers. Mr Singh may also deal with the topic of trade which, smuggling aside, heavily favours India, to Bangladeshi ire.

Most important, however, is a deal on setting up a handful of transit routes across Bangladesh, to reach India’s remote, isolated north-eastern states. These are the “seven sisters” wedged up against the border with China.

On the face of it, the $10 billion project will develop poor areas cut off from India’s booming economy. The Asian Development Bank and others see Bangladeshi gains too, from better roads, ports, railways and much-needed trade. In Dhaka, the capital, the central-bank governor says broader integration with India could lift economic growth by a couple of percentage points, from nearly 7% already.

India has handed over half of a $1 billion soft loan for the project, and the money is being spent on new river-dredgers and rolling stock. Bangladesh’s rulers are mustard-keen. The country missed out on an earlier infrastructure bonanza involving a plan to pipe gas from Myanmar to India. China got the pipeline instead.

Yet the new transit project may be about more than just development. Some in Dhaka, including military types, suspect it is intended to create an Indian security corridor. It could open a way for army supplies to cross low-lying Bangladesh rather than going via dreadful mountain roads vulnerable to guerrilla attack. As a result, India could more easily put down insurgents in Nagaland and Manipur. The military types fear it might provoke reprisals by such groups in Bangladesh.

More striking, India’s army might try supplying its expanding divisions parked high on the border with China, in Arunachal Pradesh. China disputes India’s right to Arunachal territory, calling it South Tibet. Some Bangladeshis fret that if India tries to overcome its own logistical problems by, in effect, using Bangladesh as a huge military marshalling yard, reprisals from China would follow.

..... Experts say RAW's powers and its role in India's foreign policy have varied under different prime ministers. Successes that RAW claims it contributed to include:

* the creation of Bangladesh in 1971; * India's growing influence in Afghanistan; * Sikkim's accession to India in the northeast in 1975; * the security of India's nuclear program; * the success of African liberation movements during the Cold War.----RAW had two priorities after its formation, writes B. Raman, a former RAW official, in the 2007 book ,The Kaoboys of R&AW: Down Memory Lane. The organization worked to strengthen its capability for intelligence gathering on Pakistan and China and for covert action in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Some experts say that RAW's efforts in East Pakistan, which was created from the partition of the Indian state of Bengal and completely separated from the rest of Pakistan, was aimed at fomenting independence sentiment. Over time, RAW's objectives have broadened to include:

* Monitoring the political and military developments in adjoining countries, which have direct bearing on India's national security and in the formulation of its foreign policy. * Seeking the control and limitation of the supply of military hardware to Pakistan, mostly from European countries, the United States, and China.----RAW had two priorities after its formation, writes B. Raman, a former RAW official, in the 2007 book ,The Kaoboys of R&AW: Down Memory Lane. The organization worked to strengthen its capability for intelligence gathering on Pakistan and China and for covert action in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Some experts say that RAW's efforts in East Pakistan, which was created from the partition of the Indian state of Bengal and completely separated from the rest of Pakistan, was aimed at fomenting independence sentiment. Over time, RAW's objectives have broadened to include:

* Monitoring the political and military developments in adjoining countries, which have direct bearing on India's national security and in the formulation of its foreign policy. * Seeking the control and limitation of the supply of military hardware to Pakistan, mostly from European countries, the United States, and China.----From the early days, RAW had a secret liaison relationship with the Mossad, Israel's external intelligence agency. The main purpose was to benefit from Israel's knowledge of West Asia and North Africa, and to learn from its counterterrorism techniques, say experts.------------In retaliation, in the mid-1980s, RAW set up two covert groups of its own, Counter Intelligence Team-X (CIT-X) and Counter Intelligence Team-J (CIT-J), the first targeting Pakistan in general and the second directed at Khalistani groups. The two groups were responsible for carrying out terrorist operations inside Pakistan (Newsline), writes Pakistani military expert Ayesha Siddiqa. Indian journalist and associate editor of Frontline magazine, Praveen Swami, writes that a "low-grade but steady campaign of bombings in major Pakistani cities, notably Karachi and Lahore" was carried out. This forced the head of ISI to meet his counterpart in RAW and agree on the rules of engagement as far as Punjab was concerned, writes Siddiqa. The negotiation was brokered by then-Jordanian Crown Prince Hassan bin-Talal, whose wife, Princess Sarvath, is of Pakistani origin. "It was agreed that Pakistan would not carry out activities in the Punjab as long as RAW refrained from creating mayhem and violence inside Pakistan," Siddiqa writes.

..... experts point out that India has supported insurgents in Pakistan's Balochistan, as well as anti-Pakistan forces in Afghanistan.....-------....

Hindustan Times says India had deployed nuclear-capable missiles on its western border and refused to budge under US pressure to hold any talks with Pakistan after the 2001 attack on its Parliament by terrorists from across the border, says former top American diplomat Condoleezza Rice.

And what addedto the tension in the White House's Situation Room in December 2001 was the sharp differences between the Pentagon and CIA about the ground realities in South Asia, she writes in her memoir 'No Higher Honor' that is set to hit the stands next week.

While CIA was informing the White House that India was on its way to war, the Pentagon was concluding that it was not the case, Rice, who then was National Security Adviser to president George W Bush, said.

In fact, Rice writes that CIA was speaking the language of Pakistan, which wanted the entire world to believe, in particular the US, that India was ready to attack them.

"The CIA believed that armed conflict was unavoidable because India had already decided to 'punish' Pakistan. That is likely the view that Islamabad held and wanted us to hold too.

"The fact is that after years of isolation from India, a country that had viewed the United States with suspicion for decades, the CIA was heavily reliant on Pakistani sources in 2001," Rice says in her book.

During the eight years of the Bush administration, Rice served as both the National Security Adviser and Secretary of State. "Looking at the same events unfolding on the ground, the Pentagon and the CIA gave very different assessments of the likelihood of war," she said.

"The Defence Department, relying largely on reporting and analysis from the Defence Intelligence Agency, viewed preparations as steps similar to those that any military (including our own) would take given the circumstances. In the Pentagon's view, a build-up was not necessarily evidence of a formal decision to launch an attack," Rice writes.

Rice said that the President and the National Security Council (NSC) Principals were frustrated with the ups and downs of the assessment over the next three days. "The Defence Department and the CIA remained very far apart," she said.------"Colin (Powell, the then Secretary of State) and Jack Straw, the British Foreign Minister, organised a brilliant diplomatic campaign that could be summed up as dispatching as many foreign visitors to Pakistan and India as possible.

"We reasoned that the two wouldn't go to war with high-ranking foreigners in the region. Every time they accepted a visit, we breathed a sigh of relief. We needed to buy time," Rice writes, recollecting the events of those days.

But the situation continued to deteriorate, she said, adding that by December 23 there were reports of troop movements as well as a disturbing one that India was preparing to move short-range ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads to the Indian-Pakistani border.

"We reviewed the list of dignitaries who had been deployed to the region, searching for possible intermediaries through whom we could send messages to the adversaries, and agreed to reconvene the next day," Rice said.

Given the volatility of the situation in South Asia, Rice said she cancelled her Christmas vacation at her aunt's house in Norfolk Virginia and rushed to Washington the next day.

"By December 27 the reports were confirmed: India had, indeed moved nuclear-capable missiles to the border. Colin called Jaswant Singh, the Indian Minister of External Affairs, and asked that the two countries sit down and talk. The suggestion was flatly rejected," Rice writes.

Battered by Pakistani military operations and U.S. drone strikes, the once-formidable Pakistani Taliban has splintered into more than 100 smaller factions, weakened and is running short of cash, according to security officials, analysts and tribesmen from the insurgent heartland.

The group, allied with al-Qaida and based in the northwest close to the Afghan border, has been behind much of the violence tearing apart Pakistan over the last 4 1/2 years. Known as the Tehrik-e-Taliban, or TTP, the Taliban want to oust the U.S.-backed government and install a hard-line Islamist regime. They also have international ambitions and trained the Pakistani-American who tried to detonate a car bomb in New York City's Times Square in 2010.

"Today, the command structure of the TTP is splintered, weak and divided and they are running out of money," said Mansur Mahsud, a senior researcher at the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Area) Research Center. "In the bigger picture, this helps the army and the government because the Taliban are now divided."

The first signs of cracks within the Pakistani Taliban appeared after its leader, Baitullah Mehsud, was killed in a drone strike in August 2009, Mahsud said. Since then, the group has steadily deteriorated.

Set up in 2007, the Pakistani Taliban is an umbrella organization created to represent roughly 40 insurgent groups in the tribal belt plus al-Qaida-linked groups headquartered in Pakistan's eastern Punjab province.

"In the different areas, leaders are making their own peace talks with the government," Mahsud added. "It could help the Pakistani government and military separate more leaders from the TTP and more foot soldiers from their commanders."

The two biggest factors hammering away at the Taliban's unity are U.S. drone strikes and Pakistani army operations in the tribal region.

Turf wars have flared as militants fleeing the Pakistani military operations have moved into territory controlled by other militants, sometimes sparking clashes between groups. And as leaders have been killed either by drones or the Pakistani army, lieutenants have fought among themselves over who will replace them.

"The disintegration ... has accelerated with the Pakistan military operation in South Waziristan and the drone attacks by the United States in North Waziristan," Mahsud said, referring to the two tribal agencies that are the heartland of the Pakistani Taliban.

Another factor is the divide-and-conquer strategy Pakistan's military has long employed in its dealings with militants. Commanders have broken away from the TTP and set up their own factions, weakening the organization. Battles have broken out among the breakaway factions, and in one particularly remote tribal region the TTP was thrown out. These growing signs of fissures among the disparate groups that make up the Pakistani Taliban indicate the military's strategy could be paying off.------------------------------Analysts predict that over time, however, the internecine feuding in the Pakistani Taliban will take a toll on militants fighting in Afghanistan, making it increasingly difficult for them to find recruits and restricting territory available to them.------------Cooperation between the U.S. and Pakistan suffered a serious setback a week ago when NATO aircraft killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at two border posts. The Nov. 26 incident seems certain to blunt any prospect of Pakistan taking direct steps to curb the Haqqani network, analysts say.-----------....

Here are excerpts of a McClatchy report on Indian involvement in Baloch insurgency in Pakistan:

Pakistan repeatedly has claimed that India is supporting the Baluch uprising. Insurgents deny it, but some Western diplomats believe there's evidence to back up the charge.

A diplomatic cable sent Dec. 31, 2009, from the U.S. consulate in Karachi and obtained by WikiLeaks said it was "plausible" that Indian intelligence was helping the Baluch insurgents. An earlier 2008 cable - discussing the Mumbai attack that was reportedly hatched by Pakistan-based terrorists - reported fears by British officials that "intense domestic pressure would force Delhi to respond, at the minimum, by ramping up covert support to nationalist militants fighting the Pakistani army in Baluchistan."

"Indians are 100 percent funding and training" the separatists in camps in Afghanistan, alleged a senior Pakistan security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to talk to reporters.

The official estimated that the various insurgent groups combined had 3,000 to 4,000 fighters, but that their capability "does not compare" to the superior fighters of the Pakistani Taliban, who are battling security forces in the northwest tribal areas.

Pakistani security officials believe that the insurgency is controlled by two exiled leaders, both tribal chiefs: Bramadagh Bugti, who lives in Switzerland and allegedly controls the Baluch Republican Army, and Hyrbyair Marri, who's based in London and is linked to the Baluchistan Liberation Army. Both men deny running these groups.

This year, Islamabad proposed to drop all outstanding criminal cases against Bugti and Marri and enter into negotiations - an offer that was rebuffed.

"We are occupied by Pakistan, which has done nothing for the Baluch except plunder us for 60 years," said Marri, speaking by telephone from London. "The only negotiation we are willing to hold with Pakistan is the withdrawal of its forces from our land."

The rebels have killed 166 Frontier Corpsmen since 2009, according to the military's public relations wing. The Baluchistan Liberation Army claimed responsibility in March for killing two police officers in Quetta.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan believes that some 800 settlers, including schoolteachers, barbers and professors who had origins in Punjab province, have been murdered in Baluchistan since 2006, seemingly by separatists. The rebels also have killed hundreds of fellow Baluch whom they accuse of siding with Pakistan or spying for it.

On March 10, six young and apparently unarmed Bugti men were executed by the Baluch Republican Army in the rebel stronghold of Dera Bugti. Many civilians also have been killed by landmines planted by insurgents.

Baluchistan is effectively under martial law. Naseebullah Bazai, the top civilian security official, insisted that day-to-day administration was handled by civilian authorities but added that "our resources do not meet the challenges in any way."

Here's an India Today story on Indian spies returning from jails in Pakistan:

Several persons who returned to India from Pakistan after completing their sentence for spying have decided to approach the government for compensation for the years they spent behind bars.

They claim they were on a "spying mission" for Indian intelligence agencies and that the government discarded them once they got arrested in Pakistan.

Even after their return to India after languishing in jail, the authorities remained indifferent towards them, they said.

The only exception was Kashmir Singh, who got land and monetary compensation from the Punjab government. He returned in 2008 after spending over three decades in a Pakistani jail.

Karamat Rahi, who lives in Gurdaspur district's Khaira Kalan village, said: "I am living a pauper's life now and have fallen off the agencies' map. Former spies have been coordinating with each other across the border states. We plan to highlight our plight to the government and demand compensation for giving our prime years to the nation."-------Karamat had shifted to India from Pakistan in 1980. "The security agencies took advantage of my background. They pushed me back into Pakistan in 1983. I worked for the agency and got arrested in 1988 near Minar-e-Pakistan with sensitive documents. The agencies summarily condemned me following my arrest," he said. Karamat's release was possible in 2005 after the intervention of then Punjab CM Amarinder Singh.

"When I returned after spending 18 years in jail, I approached the agency for rehabilitation. They told me not to make a noise about my plight. But I need help for settling my son, who has grown up," Karamat said.

Surjeet Singh, who returned to India after spending over three decades in prison, echoed similar sentiments.

"I will relax for a few days and then work out a strategy for seeking compensation from the government," he said, adding that he would welcome any move by fellow "spies" towards a joint effort for compensation.

Daniel aka Bahadur, who hails from Dadwain village in Gurdaspur and pulls a rickshaw to earn his livelihood, also accused the "authorities who sent him to Pakistan" of refusing to recognise him.

Daniel was apprehended by the Pakistani rangers in 1993 and imprisoned for over four years. "I tried to contact the officers who had sent me to the country but no one bothered about me," he said.--------The "spies" indicated that the security agencies require them to act as couriers. After picking them up, the agencies train them to identify military vehicles and strategic installations. They also teach them the local language and customs.

"In Kashmir's case, he assumed a Muslim name and learnt to offer namaz. He was also circumcised," Karamat said.

How the spies source information is another tricky issue. Corruption is deep-rooted in Pakistan as well. "Money always does the trick for us. What do you think, they will let me in at a cantonment if I enter it for selling oranges?" a person claiming to be a former spy asked.

He also claimed that several Pakistani soldiers were on the "payroll" of Indian agencies.

Surjeet Singh, an Indian spy, was released last week after more than 30 years in a Pakistani prison. The BBC's Geeta Pandey travels to his village in the northern Indian state of Punjab to hear his story.

When Surjeet Singh left home to go to Pakistan on a cold winter's day in December 1981, he told his wife he would return very soon. It was 30 years and six months before they saw each other again and his jet black beard had turned white.

While he was incarcerated for spying in Lahore's Kot Lakhpat jail, his family had given him up for dead. He was utterly isolated; he didn't receive a single visitor or even a letter. Some of his time in prison was spent awaiting his end on death row. Only his faith sustained him.

"All because of the almighty. He helped me through those long years," he says.

While India's economy boomed in those three decades, tragedy struck his own family. His eldest son died, as did four of his brothers, his father and two sisters.'Hurt and angry'

So when Mr Singh came across the Wagah border last week at the age of 73, he returned to a country and a family that had undergone radical change. ---------Mr Singh says the government has treated him 'unfairly" and that he is willing to fight for what is rightfully his. But if the authorities continue to deny that he worked for them?

"I have documentary proof, I will go to the Supreme Court to get what is my right," he threatens.

Mr Singh declined to show me the documentary proof and it is unclear exactly what his role was. He seems to have acted partly as a courier and says he did some recruiting of Pakistani agents.

He says that as a young man, he worked for a few years with the paramilitary Border Security Force before leaving it in 1968 to become a farmer. In the mid-1970s, he says the Indian army recruited him to work as a spy.

"I did 85 trips to Pakistan," he says. "I would visit Pakistan and bring back documents for the army. I always returned the next day. I had never had any trouble."

But on his last trip, things went horribly wrong.

"I had gone across the border to recruit a Pakistani agent. When I returned with him, an Indian official on the border insulted him. He slapped the agent and wouldn't allow him in. The agent was upset so I had to escort him back to Pakistan. In Lahore, he revealed my identity to the Pakistani authorities."---------There are other Indians in Pakistan's jails. Mr Singh says there are 20-odd Indian prisoners in Lahore's Kot Lakhpat prison - all accused of spying. Two others - Sarabjit Singh, India's most famous prisoner, and Kirpal Singh - are on death row.

But, he says, India has done little to secure their freedom.

"The government doesn't care. It refuses to do anything for these Indian prisoners. The authorities forget that these men are also someone's husband, someone's son, someone's brother."

India's policy on the issue is not to comment.

When he did not return home as promised, his wife Harbans Kaur initially thought he was held up for work. But when days turned into weeks and weeks into months and months into years, she says she didn't know what to think.

"I didn't know whether he was dead or alive," she told me.

Daughter Parminder Kaur was 12 or 13 when her father went missing. Parminder and her siblings had to drop out of school soon after as the family couldn't afford to educated them. ----------

I am sure that you are aware of the thumb-rule that CIA's budget is generally aroung 10% of the Total US Defense Budget.http://alturl.com/2gw7hhttp://alturl.com/bj9h3

This 10% thumb rule is typical for most countries.

Given that India's 2012 Defense Budget is now 40 Billion$, it is not unreasonable to assume that RAW's budget is now at 4 Billion$:http://alturl.com/two66

This means that RAW's budget is aroung 65% of our total Defence Budget of 6 Billion$.

If we go into another lost decade, and Bangladesh & India keep moving forward, it is possible that RAW's budget could be TWICE as large as our whole defence budget by 2020.

If you are correct that RAW is doing so much damage now, just imagine the kind of damage they would be capable of doing 10 years from now.

We must give a befitting response to this challenge. We must INCREASE our defense spending to at least 20 Billion$ (or 10% of GDP). We must increase the ISI budget to at least 2 Billion$ (or 1% of GDP). This is the least we can do to ensure the survival of the unity and integrity of Pakistan.

^^RH: "It's possible that there would have been occasional incidents of bombings by the TTP on their own, but the recent concerted and intense campaign requires external support from someone like to RAW to hit their enemies in Pakistani state, regardless of the civilian human toll"------

But why do you think they need EXTERNAL support from some secret agency?

1) MONEY: Any violent Islamic group can get all the money they need from virulent cash-rich Salafist organizations ("charities") based in Saudi Arabia or nearby.

2) MILITARY TRAINING: Unfortunately, we were the ones who not only trained these tribals, but also trained them to be able to train others. Our Army/ISI taught them how to carry out these organized commando-style attacks. The border areas are dotted with these training camps. These jihadist groups first used this training against Russia (80s), then India (90s) and are now using it against us (2000s).

3) MATERIEL:Again, the whole of Afghanistan & Pakistan is awash with cheap guns, bombs, explosives, grenades, rocket launchers et cetera. The US gave them a lot of this equipment in the 80s and our Army/ISI gave them still more during the 90s. The tribals went and buried tons of this materiel for future and now they have dug it all up.

So why would anyone need Indian, Israeli, American, Iranian, Northern Alliance or Russian support to carry out the mayhem we are seeing in Pakistan?

Note that I am not saying that they are not receiving external suppot. I am merely questioning your idea that they neccessarily "must have" it.

Here's NY Times blog post by Huma Yusuf on conspiracy theories in Pakistan:

As the security situation in Pakistan continues to deteriorate, trading conspiracy theories has become the new national pastime. Nothing is more popular on the airwaves, at dinner parties or around tea stalls than to speculate, especially about American activities on Pakistani soil.

According to many Pakistanis, the C.I.A. used a mysterious technology to cause the devastating floods that affected 20 million people in 2010. Washington had the teenage champion for girls’ education, Malala Yousafzai, shot as part of a campaign to demonize the Pakistani Taliban and win public support for American drone strikes against them. The terrorists who strike Pakistani targets are non-Muslim “foreign agents.” Osama bin Laden was an American operative.

The Pakistani penchant for conspiracy theories results from decades of military rule, during which the army controlled the media and the shadowy Inter-Services Intelligence agency controlled much of everything else. The lack of transparency and scarcity of information during subsequent democratic rule has further fueled rumors.

Mostly, however, conspiracy theories persist because many turn out to be true.

A few years ago, Pakistan’s independent media denounced the presence in Pakistan of C.I.A. agents and private security firms like Blackwater. While U.S. and Pakistani government officials denied any such infiltration, private television channels broadcast footage of the homes of Westerners, allegedly Blackwater agents. One right-wing newspaper, The Nation, even named one Wall Street Journal correspondent as a C.I.A. spy, forcing him to leave the country.

For a time liberal Pakistanis condemned this as a witch hunt and decried poor journalistic ethics. But soon the international media disclosed that Blackwater was in fact operating in Pakistan at an airbase in Baluchistan used by the C.I.A.

Then it was revealed that the American citizen who shot and killed two Pakistanis in Lahore in January 2011 — an American diplomat, the U.S. government claimed initially — turned out to be a C.I.A. agent, just as many conspiracy theorists had surmised.

And what about those U.S. drone strikes targeting militants in Pakistan’s tribal belt? It turns out those suspicious Pakistanis were right to imagine that their own government was complicit. That became clear when, in November 2011, to protest a NATO airstrike that killed Pakistani soldiers near the border with Afghanistan, the Pakistani government ordered the C.I.A. to leave the Shamsi airbase in Baluchistan, from where the drone attacks were being launched.

Other rumors concern India, Pakistan’s long-time rival. Zaid Hamid, a jihadist-turned-policy analyst, alleges that the Indian spy agency R.A.W. funds and arms the Pakistani Taliban. Some Pakistani officials accuse New Delhi of facilitating the separatist insurgency in Baluchistan.

This paranoia was confirmed this week by Chuck Hagel, the new U.S. secretary of defense. A video clip from 2011 that circulated during his confirmation hearings shows Hagel claiming that India uses Afghanistan as a “second front” against Pakistan and “has over the years financed problems for Pakistan on that side of the border.”

The allegation outraged the Indian government and undermined liberal Pakistanis who believe India wants a stable Pakistan and support improved bilateral ties. Meanwhile, of course, it validated those conspiracy mongers who have long warned that India wants to culturally subsume, colonize or destroy Pakistan.

Here's a News story about Pakistan accusing Afghanistan of aiding Pakistani Taliban:

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Thursday expressed concern over continued presence of safe havens of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in Kunar and Nooristan areas of Afghanistan.

Foreign Office spokesman Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhary in his weekly briefing here at Foreign Office said these elements are carrying out

undesirable activities against Pakistan.

The spokesman said Pakistan has taken up the matter many a times with Afghanistan at all levels and hoped that these safe havens of TTP would be eliminated.

He said presence of safe havens is a serious matter but Pakistan would continue to remain in cooperative mode with Afghanistan as this is best way to defeat the evil forces.

When his attention was drawn towards accusatory statements of Afghan President and Foreign Minister, the spokesman said both sides

have concerns and Pakistan believed that the best way to remove concerns and misunderstandings is to keep all channels of

communication open.

The spokesman said Pakistan is following a policy of goodwill towards Afghanistan and wanted its reflection in Afghan policy as well.

Referring to Afghan decision not to send military delegation for a training course in Quetta, he said training activities are meant to build trust and confidence between the two countries.

"We should not miss this opportunity as it promoted bilateral relations and build trust," he added.

As for the excuse presented by Afghanistan for not sending delegation for training, the spokesman said, "There was some intrusion from Afghan side and our troops only responded and that too in a disciplined and responsible manner.There was no artillery shelling as alleged by the Afghan side."

The spokesman emphasized that Pakistan and Afghanistan have to

work together in harmony to promote peace not only in Afghanistan

but also in the whole region.

Replying a question, the spokesman said so far only European

Union has approached for sending election observers to Pakistan.

He said all foreign observers will have to sign on the code of

conduct already finalised and issued by the Election Commission in

this regard.

The spokesman said Ministry of Interior will give advisory and guidance on security aspects to the foreign observers and they had

India's national security advisor Ajit Doval tells a story about his days as a spy for his country in Pakistan ..

" When in Pakistan , I happened to go to a Dargah since i was supposed to be a Muslim man. There, in front of the Dargah i saw a man with a long white beard who called me and asked me whether i was a Hindu? I said it was not true . He asked me to follow him and took me through some lanes to a nearby house . He closed the room and told me i was a Hindu since he had seen a hole in my ear ( In some Hindu traditions , both boys and girls have their ears pierced at birth) . I told him I used to be a Hindu but i had converted but he insisted I was still a Hindu . Further, he said that he could observe all this because he himself was a Hindu and showed me Durga and Shiva idols in his almirah. His family has been killed off and he had since been living in disguise. He said he felt happy when ever he could meet another Hindu . This incident was very unique for me."

Ok, just saw Mubashir Luqman attributing TTP's attack to India and blaming all those who are part of Aman ke Asha as accomplices in the grand conspiracy to harm Pakistan. Since I consider myself a a very strong proponent of peace between the two countries, therefore by this logic I guess I am also a part ( though insignificant) of that "grand" conspiracy. This is the guy who allegedly has links with the Pakistani establishment (though of course, the "salute to the martyr" types would deny it) and a strong supporter of PTI also. Perhaps Mr. Luqman would also like to explain as to why his favorite party was offering TTP, the supposed Indian agents, ministries a few months ago. I am literally dumbfounded over this twisted logic and complete inability of the media to come to their senses. It seems that no matter what happens, we are not ready to change our pattern of thinking. We are our own worst enemies and are fully responsible for the state we are in.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uqf74oIZ0-E

Raza: Ok, just saw Mubashir Luqman attributing TTP's attack to India and blaming all those who are part of Aman ke Asha as accomplices in the grand conspiracy to harm Pakistan. Since I consider myself a a very strong proponent of peace between the two countries, therefore by this logic I guess I am also a part ( though insignificant) of that "grand" conspiracy."

TTP chief Mullah Fazlullah is being protected by KHAD, the Afghan intelligence, which is widely known to be in cahoots with India's RAW. So the involvement of RAW in TTP attacks in Pakistan can not be ruled out.

TOI: "In a sharp contrast to US view on India's role in Afghanistan, President Barack Obama's defence secretary nominee Chuck Hagel has alleged that India has over the years "financed problems" for Pakistan in the war-torn country".

Riaz Haq there are ten statements from US officials blaming and accusing Pakistan also. It is your typical habit of googling and finding articles which suit your narrative only. Do you really think that I will take it seriously?

Raza: "there are ten statements from US officials blaming and accusing Pakistan also. It is your typical habit of googling and finding articles which suit your narrative only. Do you really think that I will take it seriously?"

If you take the US statements about Pakistan seriously, you should do the same with their statements about India. Also, check out this video of Indian National Security advisor Ajit Duval talking about his 7 years as undercover RAW agent in Pakistan.

both countries may be having proxy wars but to say that TTP is backed by India, typical of our national mindset. A few years ago many were actually calling them misunderstood victims and now they have suddenly become "agents". Anyways, all you can do is google and find articles which support your highly biased narrative. And yes you can feel free to accuse me of trying to win accolades from the other side of the border

Raza: "both countries may be having proxy wars but to say that TTP is backed by India, typical of our national mindset. A few years ago many were actually calling them misunderstood victims and now they have suddenly become "agents". Anyways, all you can do is google and find articles which support your highly biased narrative. And yes you can feel free to accuse me of trying to win accolades from the other side of the border"

Last year, US troops snatched former TTP deputy chief Latifullah Mesud under Hakimullah Mehusd from KHAD, the Afghan intelligence agency which has close ties with RAW.

A lot has been written and said about Pakistan’s support to insurgencies in Afghanistan and Kashmir. Not much has appeared about India’s longer and wider role in clandestine warfare against its neighbours, Sri Lanka, Nepal and particularly Pakistan. A quick viewing of a Facebook video of a recent lecture delivered by Ajit Doval, India’s ex-spymaster and now the national security adviser, should set all doubts about India’s clandestine wars at rest. Mr Doval calls Pakistan the “enemy”; extols Indian intelligence’s ability to compromise and infiltrate the Kashmir insurgency; crows about the beheading of Pakistani soldiers by the TTP and advocates a policy of “defensive offense” against Pakistan.

Actually, India’s shadow wars against Pakistan commenced in 1971 when it actively trained and financed the Mukti Bahini to fight the Pakistan Army in East Pakistan, laying the ground for India’s eventual military intervention to break up Pakistan. Even after the Simla Agreement, bomb blasts continued in Karachi and other Pakistani cities to keep Pakistan destabilised and defensive. New Delhi has missed no opportunity to support Baloch, Pakhtun and Sindhi ‘nationalists’ and other dissidents in Pakistan.

Indira Gandhi’s attack on Amritsar’s Golden Temple created an opportunity for Pakistan to pay India back in its own coin. But its support for the Khalistan insurgency was also a ‘defensive offensive’ move to neutralise the threat of an Indian attack at the behest of its Soviet ally which Pakistan, in collaboration with the US, had pinned down in Afghanistan. India’s ‘warrior’ prime minister was assassinated by her Sikh guards. Eventually, after president Zia’s demise, the Khalistan insurgency was brutally put down by India. There is considerable speculation to this day whether the incoming PPP government released a list of Sikh insurgents to the Indians.

Even as the Khalistan insurgency died, Pakistan was offered its own ‘opportunity of the century’ — as the East Pakistan revolt was called by the Indians — to secure self-determination for the Kashmiris. In December 1989, the Kashmiris revolted at the rigged elections there. On 20 December, hundreds of peaceful Kashmiri demonstrators were mowed down by Indian security forces, unleashing an armed struggle for freedom. Pakistan’s intelligence agencies, fresh from their success in backing the mujahideen in Afghanistan, opted to support the religious parties, instead of the indigenous Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, to lead the Kashmiri struggle.

Under the pressure of the insurgency, India agreed in 1994 to discuss a Kashmir settlement with Pakistan. India’s Foreign Secretary offered a settlement based on “autonomy plus, independence minus” for occupied Kashmir. Unfortunately, Pakistan was not quick enough to press its advantage and secure a good deal for the Kashmiris. India used the time to infiltrate and compromise the insurgency (as Mr Doval boasted). Some jihadi groups, like Al Faran, resorted to kidnapping and killing foreigners. This was the initial step in India’s campaign to transform the Kashmiri struggle from a legitimate liberation struggle into a terrorist movement.

When the US, after 9/11, launched its war on terrorism, India’s principal aim became to equate the Kashmiri struggle with global terrorism and Al Qaeda. New Delhi got its chance when ‘terrorists’ attacked the Indian parliament in December 2001. Despite the fact that Pakistan’s culpability was unproven, a commitment was extracted from president Musharraf’s government that Pakistan would not allow its territory to be used for ‘terrorism’ against others. Acceptance of this ‘obligation’ was interpreted as an admission of Pakistan’s culpability. The Kashmiri struggle was over for all intents and purposes.

In his first comments after losing power in early January, Sri Lanka’s former president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, has pinned the blame on India’s external intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), for the situation in his country as well as in Pakistan. Rajapaksa was speaking to a journalist from the Pakistani daily, Dawn.

When the reporter told him that many Sri Lankans had mentioned how Pakistan helped in quelling the Tamil insurgency, and asked how this was the case, Rajapaksa said, “See the US, Europe, the west, they are not our friends. Pakistan helped us, especially Musharraf. What happened in my country and the insurgency in your country, RAW is behind it.”

Rajapaksa’s charge comes in the wake of a Reuters report in mid January, which said that a RAW official had been asked by the then Rajapaksa government to leave the country before the polls. This was in response to the perception of the old government that RAW had helped cobble up the opposition alliance, which eventually ousted Rajapaksa. The Ministry of External Affairs had rubbished the report, and said no movement of diplomatic personnel had taken place from the Indian embassy in Colombo before their scheduled tenure was over.

MEA did not respond to Rajapaksa’s charge immediately. But a serving intelligence official, speaking to HT, said, “Did we spawn terror in Pakistan? Did we alienate Tamils and Muslims and the Sinhalese opposition? It is easy to blame external actors when you are responsible for the internal mess.” He called it ‘cheap nationalist stunts’.

Iran is supplying weapons, ammunition, and funding to the Taliban as well as recruiting and training their fighters, according to Afghan and Western officials (WSJ). “At the beginning Iran was supporting Taliban financially,” said a senior Afghan official. “But now they are training and equipping them, too.” Iran has even begun to turn to Afghan immigrants within its borders to find new recruits for the Taliban by offering to double their salaries if they join the Taliban. Officials say Iran’s strategy in backing the Taliban is countering U.S. influence in the region and providing a counterweight to the Islamic State’s move into Taliban territory in the country. “Iran is betting on the re-emergence of the Taliban,” said a Western diplomat. “They are uncertain about where Afghanistan is heading right now, so they are hedging their bets.”

KABUL—When Abdullah, a Taliban commander in central Afghanistan, needs more rifles and ammunition, he turns to the same people who pay his $580-a-month salary: his Iranian sponsors.

“Iran supplies us with whatever we need,” he said.

Afghan and Western officials say Tehran has quietly increased its supply of weapons, ammunition and funding to the Taliban, and is now recruiting and training their fighters, posing a new threat to Afghanistan’s fragile security.

Iran’s strategy in backing the Taliban is twofold, these officials say: countering U.S. influence in the region and providing a counterweight to Islamic State’s move into the Taliban’s territory in Afghanistan.

The Taliban’s aggressive military push and the new momentum toward peace negotiations between them and Kabul also raises the possibility that some of their members could eventually return to power.

“Iran is betting on the re-emergence of the Taliban,” said a Western diplomat. “They are uncertain about where Afghanistan is heading right now, so they are hedging their bets.”

--------

Iran’s alliance with the Taliban took a new turn in June 2013 when Tehran formally invited a Taliban delegation to participate in a conference on Islam and to meet senior Iranian officials.

By the fall of that year, Afghan security officials said they had clear evidence that Iran was training Taliban fighters within its borders. Tehran now operates at least four Taliban training camps, according to Afghan officials and Mr. Abdullah, the Taliban commander. They are in the Iranian cities of Tehran, Mashhad and Zahedan and in the province of Kerman.

“At the beginning Iran was supporting Taliban financially,” said a senior Afghan official. “But now they are training and equipping them, too.”

--------

One of the main points of contact between Tehran and the insurgency is head of the Taliban’s Qatar-based political office, Tayeb Agha, Afghan and foreign officials said. His most recent trip to Iran was in mid-May, the insurgent group said. The Taliban deny they receive support from Iran or any other foreign country, but say they want good relations with Afghanistan’s neighbors.

Iran’s backing of the Taliban has a strategic rationale. Tehran is already battling Islamic State, also known as Daesh, in Syria and Iraq, and it is wary of a new front line emerging close to its eastern border, Afghan officials say.

“Iran seeks to counter Daesh with the Taliban,” said an Afghan security official.

For the Taliban, Islamic State militants represent a threat of a different kind: they are competitors. Since an offshoot of Islamic State announced plans to expand in Afghanistan and Pakistan earlier this year, the new group has been actively recruiting fighters, many of whom are disaffected Taliban, say residents and Afghan officials.

Lohdi told The Associated Press the dossiers include information about “India’s involvement and support to terrorism in different parts of Pakistan.”

One dossier relates to Pakistan’s tribal areas, another relates to Karachi, and the third to the southwestern region of Baluchistan, she said. “So the idea is to really go to the international community through the U.N. secretary-general and to expose the kind of destabilizing actions that India is taking against my country.”

Pakistan and India have a history of uneasy relations and they have fought two of their three wars over the disputed Kashmir region, which is claimed by both countries. Forces on both sides of the Line of Control, which divides Kashmir, have traded fire several times in recent weeks.

Lohdi cited the “escalating tensions in the region” as the reason Islamabad was taking this step. “We believe that these actions must stop,” she said, and she called for a return to dialogue. “We’re ready to go anywhere, at any level, to resume the dialogue process, but this dialogue cannot be on the basis of preconditions.”

She said India had not responded to her move, and she said her country was “disappointed” at the response that India’s foreign minister gave to Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Wednesday speech to the U.N. General Assembly — in which Pakistan offered a four-point peace initiative.

She called India’s response the following day “non-serious” and called on India, “Why don’t you put something on the table, too?”

She said Pakistan is in conversation with the U.N. about “how best to take this forward.”

Dispose of the notion that #India does not do covert operations (#terrorism) against #Pakistan. #RAW http://thewire.in/2016/03/26/beyond-pakistans-claims-to-have-caught-a-raw-agent-lies-a-wilderness-of-mirrors-26116/ … via @thewire_in

Pakistan’s Dunya News channel said that Jadhav had been arrested from the Chaman area of Balochistan, that his address in Mumbai was No 502B Silver Oak, Powai, Hiranandani Gardens and that he had a passport no. L9630722, with a valid Iranian visa made out in the name of Hussein Mubarak Patel. The channel said that Jadhav had joined RAW in 2013 and was initially based in Chabahar, the port in Iran which India is helping to develop.

The Indian Express has confirmed that Jadhav does indeed live where the Pakistani report says he does, is the son of a former police official in Mumbai, and is a businessman who had interests around the world, though it has not figured out what business he does.

---

The first big question is why a commander-level officer would be involved in a cross-border operation. His rank is the equivalent of a lieutenant colonel in the army, and officers of this rank run operations from a distance, they don’t participate in them.

----

What the Jadhav arrest has done is to bring to the public domain the covert war that India is fighting against Pakistan. We know a lot about the Pakistani war against India, but not so much about the Indian effort. It also opens up the possibility that this war, bitter though it may be, can also be fought with some rules – principally, that arrested agents are treated with dignity, not just by those who arrest them, but in their own home country after they return.

Spies who have served the country with great fortitude and suffered torture and long terms of imprisonment are left to rot when and if they manage to return home, usually after long spells of imprisonment. This is in stark contrast to the practices of countries like Russia, Israel, the US or Britain, which sticks by its men, and, in the right circumstances quietly arranges exchanges.

Pakistan on Tuesday released a video in which an arrested Indian spy is heard confessing New Delhi's alleged involvement in terrorist activities in Balochistan.

Kulbushan Yadav says in the video that he had been directing various activities in Karachi and Balochistan "at the behest of RAW", the Indian intelligence agency, and that he was still with the Indian Navy.

Yadav added that he had played a role in the deteriorating law and order situation in Karachi, Dawn reported.

The video was released at a press conference attended by Pakistan Army spokesman Lt Gen Asim Bajwa and Information Minister Pervez Rashid.

Terming Yadav's arrest a "big achievement", Bajwa said Yadav was directly handled by the RAW chief and Indian National Security Adviser Ajit Doval.

"His goal was to disrupt development of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), with Gwadar port as a special target," Bajwa said.

"This is nothing short of state-sponsored terrorism... There can be no clearer evidence of Indian interference in Pakistan."

Yadav is heard saying in the video that he was still a serving officer in the Indian Navy and would be due for retirement in 2022.

"By 2002, I commenced intelligence operations. In 2003, I established a small business in Chabahar in Iran.

"As I was able to achieve undetected existence and visits to Karachi in 2003 and 2004. Having done some basic assignments within India for RAW, I was picked up by RAW in 2013 end," Yadav said.

He said his purpose was to meet Baloch insurgents and carry out "activities with their collaboration".

Law enforcement agencies arrested Yadav in an intelligence-based raid in Balochistan's Chaman near the border with Afghanistan last week. He held a valid Indian visa.

India denied Yadav was an intelligence operative and said he was formerly from the navy. New Delhi also demanded consular access to Yadav, which has been denied.

Yadav was shifted to Islamabad for interrogation, during which an unnamed official said the spy revealed he had bought boats at the Iranian port in Chabahar in order to target Karachi and Gwadar ports, Dawn reported.

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About Me

I am the Founder and President of PakAlumni Worldwide, a global social network for Pakistanis, South Asians and their friends. I also served as Chairman of the NEDians Convention 2007. In addition to being a South Asia watcher, an investor, business consultant and avid follower of the world financial markets, I have more than 25 years experience in the hi-tech industry. I have been on the faculties of Rutgers University and NED Engineering University and cofounded two high-tech startups, Cautella, Inc. and DynArray Corp and managed multi-million dollar P&Ls. I am a pioneer of the PC and mobile businesses and I have held senior management positions in hardware and software development of Intel’s microprocessor product line from 8086 to Pentium processors. My experience includes senior roles in marketing, engineering and business management. I was recognized as “Person of the Year” by PC Magazine for my contribution to 80386 program. I have an MS degree in Electrical engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
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